"I can assure you I did not win some sort of contest to replace Steve Carell," insists James Spader, who joins the cast of The Office as Sabre CEO Robert California in the September 22 premiere. "I just thought, this show is fun, this character is strange and NBC asked me to sign on, so I said, 'Absolutely.'" How's life in the office so far?
For a guy who spent years hanging with Hobbits and Orcs in Middle Earth, it's weird to hear Elijah Wood call Wilfred "the strangest project I've ever done." Especially since it's true. FX's new comedy is the weirdest show you'll watch all summer, or maybe ever. The hilarity kicks off with — hee hee — a suicide attempt gone wrong. Unable to mix a potent enough pill smoothie, aimless ex-lawyer Ryan (Wood) finds salvation in the form of...
Sexier than Cagney and Lacey, brainier than Laverne and Shirley and way better at tracking down serial killers than the women of The View, Rizzoli and Isles are TV's favorite gal pals of the moment. The show's ratings are through the roof. Bloggers obsess over the characters' "secret" love lives. Big-name guest stars are on the horizon. Still, for Angie Harmon, the show's chisel-cheeked costar, the true sign of success was getting a shout-out from Liz Lemon. Last spring, when Tina Fey's character on 30 Rock heard that her boss Jack was buying a cable network, Liz practically started hyperventilating: "Is it TNT? Are Rizzoli and Isles friends in real life?""I know it was a joke, but I kinda went, 'Hey, we made it!'" says Harmon. She's taking a break between scenes on the Rizzoli & Isles set in Los Angeles and talking about the 101 unexpected side effects of having the hottest new cable show of the past year. In its debut run last summer, Rizzoli & Isles drew nearly 9 million viewers a week, making the one-hour drama about a duo of mismatched crime investigators the highest-rated commercial-supported cable series of all time. And it's not just Tina Fey: "Old guys from Boston, young girls who tell me we inspire them, moms on the street," Harmon says. "I'm in awe of all the fans of this show."All season long...
Atticus Shaffer is having Lego flashbacks. "It was a Star Wars set," he says with a groan that makes him sound 70, not 12. "Something like 1,035 pieces. It took me three days to put together." Shaffer only had a few last bricks to click when... Crash! Meowww! "My cat jumped on it and destroyed everything." Shaffer scrunches up his shoulders, tosses up his hands. "So you just start rebuilding." The adorable young star of The Middle is tenacious like that. At a Lego store near where the ABC sitcom shoots in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, Shaffer is recalling his most memorable projects:
Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly is planning to guest star as himself — playing a "potential murder suspect" — on an episode of Rizzoli & Isles this coming season. He and show creator Janet Tamaro have known each other ever since Tamaro's first TV job at Inside Edition, where they worked together. O'Reilly is also friendly with Rizzoli star Angie Harmon, an outspoken conservative.
It doesn't matter how many phony shoot-outs you do as an actor. Nothing prepares you for the real deal. "There's smoke in the air and I can see it and taste it," Jason Clarke says with reverence in his voice. He's recalling one of the many ride-alongs he was on with Chicago law enforcement in preparation to play a detective on The Chicago Code, Fox's new cop drama from The Shield creator Shawn Ryan. "Our car pulls up and there's a guy on the ground. He's been shot. It's nighttime. We're outside a church. My heart is pounding and my mind is going, 'What the hell am I doing here?'"
With a bum leg and a skulking aversion to just about everything, House (Hugh Laurie) doesn't seem a likely candidate to trip the light fantastic with girlfriend Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein). Thank the ghosts of Fred and Ginger for dream sequences. In tonight's "Bombshells" episode, Cuddy's anxiety about her relationship with House plays out in a series of fantasies — including a Hollywood Western scene — capped by the Huddsters hitting the floor to an updated version of "Come On Get Happy." The job of turning doctors into dancers was a snap — or at least half the job was. "For Lisa, this was a dream come true," says exec producer Greg Yaitanes. "She has experience as a dancer and singer and was willing and wonderful." Laurie? "Let's just say he had to surrender to the idea," Yaitanes says, laughing.Fortunately, they had an inspiring coach. Mia Michaels, Emmy-winning choreographer extraordinaire of Fox's So You Think You Can Dance, worked for days ...
The Yuletide episodes of The Closer are true standouts every season, and this one's got it all: holiday hilarity, family dysfunction and, of course, murder. The two-parter opens tonight at 9/8c on TNT with a death on Christmas Eve in a case that threatens to dash everybody's holiday plans. "Brenda [Kyra Sedgwick] and Raydor [Mary McDonnell] always fight to gain control of cases, but they're fighting to give this one away," says exec producer James Duff. Things get even screwier after Brenda's parents (Frances Sternhagen and Barry Corbin) show up...
Today, TNT announced that Emmy winner Kyra Sedgwick has decided to end her run as The Closer's Brenda Leigh Johnson after the show's upcoming 2011 season, its seventh. Creator James Duff recently told TV Guide Magazine that he'd...
Girls are being raped, tortured and stuffed into barrels. A self-help guru named Jordan (Jonny Lee Miller) is definitely up to no good. And somehow, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) and his new partner-in-crime, Lumen (Julia Stiles), are finding time for a little nookie.It's been a bloody good run this season on Dexter, and the finale is shaping up to be a jab-and-stabber of epic proportions. "Usually, Dexter is alone in seeking vengeance, but now he's got Lumen at his side so it's double the trouble," says executive producer Sara Colleton.Last year's shocking finale ...
Kyra Sedgwick lets out a big "Ha!" when asked how Brenda Leigh Johnson, the Georgia peach—turned—Los Angeles police babe she plays on The Closer, has changed after six seasons on TNT. "That's the wonderful and fun thing about Brenda," she says. "The woman really hasn't evolved." On one level, Sedgwick is right. The Closer returns tonight for five episodes ending with ...
Life has been twisted, dark and miserable lately for Lumen Pierce (Julia Stiles), which makes her an absolutely perfect fit for Dexter this season. She's been raped, exploited and whipped so badly even Stiles felt the pain. As the actress known for her work in the Bourne movies says, "I forgot to take off my prosthetic slash marks one night and I suddenly went, 'Wait. What happened to me?'"The bigger question is what's happening to Lumen?...
It was the question every Mad Men fan was asking during the Season Four finale, and smirking Roger Sterling summed it up perfectly: "Megan, out there?" Don Draper's impulsive decision to pop the question to his secretary Megan was certainly the whopping shocker of the night, but it wasn't the only one. Turns out Joan didn't have her abortion after all (how's that smirk doing now, Roger?), while Peggy is practically inventing the women's movement, albeit in Topaz pantyhose. Shortly before the finale, TV Guide Magazine spoke to Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner to get his thoughts on a mad, mad, mad, Mad Men season....
"Who is Don Draper?" was the opening line of Mad Men this season. As it concludes, will dapper Don (Jon Hamm) be any closer to the answer? "Absolutely, conclusively," insists John Slattery, who plays fellow adman Roger Sterling. "Don came through his divorce, started the new business and survived his own personal cauldron. He ends the year transformed."Beyond that...
It's hard to imagine the father from My Three Sons in a mess like this. TV's newest widowed dad, Dexter Morgan, has left his kids at home to get the goods on a suspect he thinks may be a murderer. If that's true, Dex will probably have to kill the guy, just as he's offed 60-odd other psychos since the Showtime series began in 2006. Of course, Dexter himself might be the next casualty if he keeps the kids and their new nanny waiting much longer."It's definitely not easy balancing single fatherhood with the sort of affliction Dexter has," Michael C. Hall says with wry amusement on the set in Los Angeles, where Season 5 finds his character dealing with the aftermath of his wife Rita's death. In case you missed the most jaw-dropping twist in Dexter history, here's what went down in last season's finale...
First the kiss and now this! It's wedding day and House and Cuddy are shaking booty on the dance floor. She's in a slinky backless gown. He's in a tuxedo (and sneakers, naturally) and they're talking guest lists and chocolate fountains. For reals, as House likes to say. Fox would kill us if we spilled too much about this upcoming House episode but, OK, House and Cuddy aren't the ones tying the knot just yet. Of course, the way their romance is plowing ahead after six seasons of platonic simmer, it might be wise to keep your Monday nights free just in case.So far this season, House (Hugh Laurie) and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) have cuddled, snuggled, snogged, fondled like 10th graders and played a hot round of sexy Boggle (i lobe you? Really, House?).Since House and Cuddy have answers for everything, TV Guide Magazine barraged the actors who play them with snoopy questions in a penthouse suite of the Los Angeles hotel where the wedding scenes were being shot. There was plenty of giggling and flirty repartee, even as we asked the snoopiest question of all: Was consummating Cuddy and House's relationship the kiss of death for the series? ...
On Dexter, no prop is more iconic than the box Dexter Morgan uses to organize blood slides of his victims. And, TV Guide Magazine has learned exclusively, star Michael C. Hall gave an original box to his doctor after successful treatment for Hodgkin's lymphoma earlier this year. "He's an oncologist, and I noticed he had his own collection of bone marrow blood slides," says Hall, recovered and back at work on Season 5 (premiering September 26 on Showtime). "Towards the end of my treatment ...
"I still have a lot of mixed feeling about reality television," admits Kat Von D, the Hollywood tattoo artist whose reality series, LA Ink, returned for a fourth season last week (Wednesdays, 10/9c, TLC). "I've lost friends but I've made new friends, too, and the show has basically changed everything for me." Season 3 ended with the surprise departure of Corey Miller, Kat's longtime mentor and business partner at High Voltage, her L.A. tattoo parlor...
"There's only one Don Draper," Vincent Kartheiser says, "and when you work alongside somebody like that, you make your peace with being a beta male." Kartheiser is talking about his Mad Men character, Pete Campbell, the ambitious WASP who has never quite matched the profile of his ad-agency superior, played by Jon Hamm. But that dynamic might shift...
"Oh, it's been an 11," Jennifer Carpenter says, when asked how intense the last year has been, on a 1 to 10 scale, for her and husband and Dexter co-star Michael C. Hall. Just working on a show like Dexter would be extreme enough. Season 4 — available as a complete set on Blu-ray and DVD August 17 — ended with Dexter ...
Open car doors. Cardboard boxes. Maybe a cadaver or two. Many are the ways Emily Procter plans to hide her pregnant belly this season on CSI: Miami. The actress, who plays CSI Calleigh Duquesne on the hit CBS drama, is expecting her first child with musician Paul Bryan early in December...
It wasn't the swords. It wasn't the sandals. For Rufus Sewell, the tough part was all the stinkin' mud. Playing a 12th-century stonemason in mega miniseries The Pillars of the Earth, premiering tonight on Starz at 10/9c, meant maintaining "a level of grime on my neck consistent with that of your typical farm animal," he says. A small price, indeed, for what's shaping up to be the armor-clanking, leech-sucking, monks-a-poppin' drama of the summer. Pillars, based on Ken Follett's doorstop of a best-seller (all 973 pages of it), about the quest to build a Gothic cathedral in a fictional England of yore, runs eight hours over six Friday nights...
