As an actor I think sometimes producers need a little bit of encouragement to see you in a particular role they may not have as much imagination as you would expect.
If my accent betrayed my foreign birth it also stamped me as an enemy in the imagination of the producers.
Chemistry is not anything an executive producer or writer can orchestrate or plan you just hope for it.
He's a good tough producer yes. But I don't think that he's unreasonable unless he feels threatened. And when somebody's in your home I think everybody in the home gets threatened.
In the old days... it was a basic cardinal fact that producers didn't have opinions. When I was producing natural history programmes I didn't use them as vehicles for my own opinion. They were factual programmes.
One of my producers said this business is like a hamster on that little wheel thing that goes around and around. You may have a great day and get great ratings but then you've got another show to do - whatever moment of success or happiness you have you've got to keep grinding it out for the next day.
I've been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I'm a 'Sopranos' fan I'm a 'Wire' fan I'm a 'Mad Men' fan. I'm a 'Deadwood' fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump.
It's funny because '1600 Penn' was the first time I really started to read the reviews because I am an executive producer and I wanted to see what people were enjoying and not enjoying as a means to an end right?
I've never let producers tell me what to do. Even when I was making television I always did what I wanted to do and if I couldn't I didn't do it. It was a freedom that these days young directors starting out don't have.
Food was always a big part of my life. My grandfather was one of 14 kids and his parents had a pasta factory so as a kid he and his siblings would sell pasta door to door. After he became a movie producer he opened up De Laurentiis Food Stores - one in Los Angeles and one in New York.