Interview with Eric Sheffer Stevens Part One

Welcome to Day One of my interview with Eric Sheffer Stevens! This incredibly talented actor of stage and screen was kind enough to sit down with me (via phone) a couple of weeks ago for a wide-ranging conversation, which will be shared over the next few days on my blog. Today, we talk about the differences between film, stage, and TV, how acting is like writing, and how his creative process has changed over the years.

One thing I noticed as I was looking at your resume, you’ve worked in all the major areas of acting – primetime, daytime, stage, film, commercial. Just wondering what’s different between them for you, or is there a difference, in terms of the way you work or the experience you get out of it?

Yeah, there’s a pretty big difference. This last project, SILENT HOUSE, that I just did, there was a month of just sort of being immersed in this “thing”. There’s so much waiting – you’re not really being hugely productive, because film is a lot of lighting, and waiting for them to set up the shots. So you’re sort of immersed in the world for a very long time without actually producing anything or capturing it on film. So it feels different, and you have to learn how to fill that time to be able to plug right back into that story when they actually are ready to go.

You had mentioned on the radio show yesterday that it was all done in one shot.
Yeah, that’s a very cool project. It’ll be good to see how that’s going to play out. That’s very unusual. Very unique, film-wise. It was a lot of rehearsal, for a week and a half or two weeks, without any film crew. Well, we were with the DP, the Director of Photography, because he was very much in the whole dance. We had to choreograph him into everything so that you never see him. And it’s in a sort of dark house, so we had to rehearse how to light ourselves with lanterns and flashlights. It was pretty technical and ultimately really interesting work. I enjoyed it a lot.

As far as your other question about the differences between them, each thing is very different, even within the genres, so it’s hard to say. Theater is very much being immersed in rehearsing a scene over and over for an hour and a half and then you move on and you try and work on the next one and then you put the whole thing together over four weeks or five weeks just so you can do it in front of an audience and feel confident about it, feel like you’ve really fleshed it out. You don’t do that at all in TV. TV is also fun for that reason.

There are a lot of people, I think, who prefer one over the other, and then some who feel comfortable going in between them. I feel very comfortable going in between. Doing TV, you use a completely different part of your brain and your creative process and you just have to make very quick decisions, and if you’re good, hopefully the decision will be a good one. And then you’re stuck with it.

A lot of times what happens, which is kind of funny, and it happens in both film and tv, you work so long that day, and then that night in bed you go, “Oh, shoot, THAT was the way to solve that problem.” And you so wish that you could have had another go at it because you feel like you found something really interesting in the scene that you didn’t get to (do) because you just are spending that day, one day, in it. In theater, you can have that thought and then bring it back to rehearsal the next day. And, you know, keep building on that performance.

Tied in with this a little bit – in writing, we refer to it as plotters or pantsers. Whether you plot out every detail in advance or whether you just kind of fly by the seat of your pants. And wondering if there’s something similar in your acting, or does it depend. Like with theater, you can look at the role and decide where you’re going to go with each different scene, but when you’re thrown into something, like in daytime, where you have one day to walk on and do the work, is that more seat of the pants?

That’s very seat of your pants there, doing the daytime stuff. You’re really hanging out there.

Do you prefer one way or the other? Do you prefer having the time to immerse yourself in the character and the script or do you like the challenge of just jumping feet first?
More and more I’m liking not knowing what’s going to happen, and not having thought it out. I’m to a point now where I know what I need to do preparation-wise and then find the things in rehearsal (or actually while you’re taping, as is the case for daytime)…

I think I used to, especially when I was younger, I tried to plan things out too much. Just because I wasn’t very comfortable trusting that something would come to me. And also I didn’t want to suck.

I don’t have that anymore. I’m not afraid to suck.

I don’t care, or I care much less, about what people think about what I’m doing. And that frees me up to actually rehearse. And then you make mistakes and you look stupid, but if you don’t care that you look stupid, then it’s okay. Then you can move on to the next – actually reach something better than if you were playing it safe and caring about what people are thinking of you.

That especially applies to theater, where you’re rehearsing and you care about what your colleagues think, and you want them to trust you and feel like you’re going to get somewhere with this performance, but you have to spend usually the second week and the third week just feeling like crap. Because you have a tenuous grasp of the lines, and you’re not quite where you want to be character-wise, and it’s in that time that you kind of figure it all out, and everybody’s really familiar with that period. So as you do it more and more, you trust that something’s going to come, and you arrive there a lot faster than when you’re younger.

It’s similar with writing, people talk about the “sagging middle”. You know, the first couple chapters, everything’s great, you’re just flying along, and then you hit the wall, and it’s the worst thing ever written in the history of the universe. It just totally sucks. And you just have to work your way through it. And the more practice you get, the more you learn to trust your own skill.

Yeah, right. And you’re going to be able to write your way out of this hole and end up somewhere.

Eric Sheffer Stevens, Part Two
Eric Sheffer Stevens, Part Three

Eric Sheffer Stevens, Part Four