Conversations
actually a great feedback system. They are sort of like a preview and we get to know how the audience will respond to it.”
How did you prepare for the role? Did you interview a writer?
“I used to live in New York, so I have a lot of friends who work in magazines and stuff like that. I did talk to a couple of them about most of the stuff that we do in the show which sort of takes place in a magazine but has more to do with friendship, storylines and jokes, or relationships with women. So, I didn’t do a lot of thinking about what a writer’s life is like beyond sort of the day-to-day routine. I would call my writer-friend to ask, ‘What do you carry around in your backpack?’ Or, ‘At your desk, what do you do with your buddies, do you mess around or do you just work all the time and then go home?’ I would get different answers. Like actors, writers live an artistic life so there’s a similarity between the two professions.”
For a show like Men at Work, obviously the main characters need to have some sort of chemistry and it works pretty well among the three of you. Does this chemistry also exist off-screen?
“That’s a great question and thank you for the compliment. Some of us really knew each other before the show and we all became good friends pretty quickly. We all spend a lot of time together. It’s been a while since we shot Season Two and we all haven’t seen each other quite a bit. Since then, we get along very well. James and I play tennis together once or twice a week. Danny and Adam go to a lot of music concerts together. Danny and I play golf together. We spend a lot of time together. We’ve become good friends, for sure.”
A lot of people really love your hair. Is it difficult to maintain that look?
(Laughs). “No, I mean they pay people good money on the show to make sure it looks good. But most of it has nothing to do with me. They sometimes cut it on the show or put some products on it, but it is what it is. The hair is definitely what it is.”
Any episode that you‘ve found particularly interesting?
“That’s another interesting question. There are a couple of episodes in the Second Season where we’re talking about where my character does more of the journalism side of it. I do an article on the Best Burger in New York City and I do an article on something else. It was interesting working on those episodes because they were different from what we’ve been doing in Season One. In that way, it did sort of occur to me that that gig is a very specific gig. Like the burger episode, we went from place to place trying burgers and that kind was an interesting thing because the burger article in New York magazine is actually a really popular article that I used to read when I lived in New York. It was interesting to think about what goes into those kinds of articles and stuff like that. For sure, that’s definitely like a learning experience that I didn’t expect to get when I signed on for the job.” (Laughs)
Each season of Men At Work has only 10 episodes while other TV shows sometimes have up to 20-something. Do you think it is better to keep it like short and sweet?
“You know, I think there’s good and bad to both. Obviously, I love working on the show. My work is contained within the week that it takes to shoot an episode. So, our writers work very hard to stay ahead on scripts to make sure that stories are topnotch. The more episodes you add in the season, the harder they have to work to stay ahead. Ultimately, they can’t stay ahead — they fall behind and that’s what happens with network TV all the time. So, working in shorter seasons is really good for the writers but I think all of us really enjoy making the show. We’d certainly be willing to make more at a stretch if it came to that in later seasons. So, there are advantages and disadvantages.”
Do you want your fans to remember you as Tyler long after the series is gone?
“Hmmmm… It feels nice to have your character gets stuck in the mind of your fans. But I’d like to be remembered as a good father and a good husband and a guy that treated people with respect and an artist that added something to his time on this earth.”
If you were a journalist, who would be your three dream interviews?
“I’m obsessed with tennis so one of them would probably be Roger Federer. There’s also Nelson Mandela and probably Stephen King III.”
Besides acting, what other passions do you have? What would you have become if the acting thing didn’t pay off?
(Laughs) “Well, that’s a question I’m always asking myself when I’m out of work. Like, what am I going to do if I get another job?” (Laughs again) “I like to read. I have these fantasies of a ‘novel inside me’ but I know I will never sit down and write it. I like the idea of the writer’s life. My wife is a writer. I watch her and sometimes I’m grateful that I don’t do it and sometimes, I feel like I could.
“As I’ve said, writing is kind of similar to acting. If I couldn’t be a professional athlete, I would want to be a doctor that does home visits. In America, we don’t really have those guys anymore. I like the idea of a doctor who has a relationship to this family and comes to the place where they live, stuff like that. Some kind of, you know, a family practitioner/doctor who is more involved in the community than the way that our healthcare system is set up here.”
You said your wife is a writer. Any pointers from her on how to portray Tyler?
(Laughs) “She’s a different kind of writer. She writes, you know, television comedy. She’s like a copywriter. You know, she writes in our house. So, she doesn’t know how to, you know, depict a writer interviewing other people or anything like that. And also, I think we try to stay out of each other’s performances and stuff like that as best we can. Sometimes we collaborate, but we try not to tell each other how to do each other’s thing.”
Being married and all, do you still relate easily to the single guy characters in the show?
“Another great question. There are times when I’d be sitting in the dressing room with all the guys and reading the script. I’d get to a part and I turn to James or Adam, ‘Does this really happen?’ Like, we did a texting episode in Season One and I was like, ‘I had no idea that there was such an art to texting with a woman that you were going on a date with.’ The texting function on my phone is used for groceries and that’s about it. So, I just had no idea.
“There are other things like, you know, in the first episode of Season Two, Tyler has this huge, big romantic idea about how he’s going to find Milo a girlfriend. That way is not really about being single or married. It’s about what you believe in about love and all that stuff. In that way, Tyler and I are very similar. So, even though he’s single, our insides look similar even though our outsides are a little different.”
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