They Would Kill for An Emmy

Are the cigarettes real?
SLATTERY: No, they're herbal.
GRIFFITHS: Ecstasy.
SLATTERY: Herbal cigarettes. They leave this yellow film all over everything. They can't be too good for you.

Mary-Louise, do you want to talk about how you prepared to play Nancy?
PARKER: No. It's so boring and tedious to talk about, and I always feel really goofy and self-conscious talking about preparation. It feels pretentious, and also it's something that you want to protect. It's just hard to explain—I feel silly talking about it.
GRIFFITHS: I love hearing about people's process.
PARKER: I like hearing about people's process.
HALL: Just not talking about your own. [Laughter]
PARKER: I mean, I do generally try to shut everything and everyone out.

Rachel, is it true that you turned down your first TV job?
GRIFFITHS: I did, to stay with the Woolly Jumpers theater-for-schools company. I was with a troupe funded by the [Australian] government that performed regionally in the countryside, and we'd spent six months putting on shows, and we packed our van and toured. And at the end of my first year I got offered to be the new doctor on "The Flying Doctors," which is kind of a hip, glamorous Australian show.

WILSON: Is that like "The Flying Nun"? Doctors in a plane?
GRIFFITHS: Yeah, they arrive for farmers who've hurt themselves, or got stuck under the tractor. I didn't go to theater school. I went to a very second-rate college that no one ever got kicked out of, and I just didn't feel ready. I felt like if I did another year I would be a really good actor, and if I went into "The Flying Doctors" I would be out of my element and scared and feel like I didn't know what I was doing.

People must have thought you were insane.
GRIFFITHS: A lot of people said that, but when I came out, there had been all this buzz because I turned it down and I was this crazy girl that was going with this theater troupe in the countryside who didn't do the show. So when I finished that, all the casting agents threw me a lot of things, and I went for "Muriel's Wedding" and I got it.

So it wasn't that you didn't want to do TV?
GRIFFITHS: I've never been snobbish about a medium, and I've always said, you know, I'll do theater for f–––ing schools, I'll do Braille library books, I'll do radio. Whatever's the best script on my table that has my name on it, I'll do it. When I first did "Six Feet Under," everyone was really surprised that I was doing television, and I was, like, "It's the best thing I have ever been offered. Why wouldn't I?"

No one turns down TV now.
GRIFFITHS: No, they don't. Everyone is, like, "Wow, you're really smart to do TV. You got in early."

John, have you turned down roles?
SLATTERY: Yeah, for all kinds of reasons—because I didn't have a connection to it, I couldn't shoot out of town or it didn't pay enough money. But most of the time, I agree with Rachel, if it's good enough and if it's something you read and you go, "I have to do this," you figure out how to do it.