‘All in the Family.' I loved watching Carroll O'Connor play this despicable character and make him so hysterically flawed and charmingly vulnerable to where he could get away with saying so many off-color things and yet it endeared him to you.

That straight man character is a short trip between comedy and drama in a project, so I can play the comedic beat on the same page as a dramatic beat. It gives me a lot of freedom as an actor to play scenes in multiple ways because I don't play the clown, nor do I play someone who is particularly maudlin.

It's not new: In the '70s, Archie Bunker said terrible things on 'All in the Family,' but it was all in Carroll O'Connor's performance. You saw lack of intelligence, and you laughed.

People say: 'Why do you want to play the straight man?' Well, it's because he gets to be in every scene.

Nothing would make me happier than doing nothing but drama for the foreseeable future.

You hit those valleys sometimes and it's really frustrating. It's like getting stuck in traffic on the freeway. But there's not much you can do about it.