In the first two episodes, before she becomes Queen, I could be a lot freer with my emotions, but as the series goes on, she develops an armour in order to cope with her circumstances. She has to be a sphinx, which must be so hard. Imagine never being able to shout, 'Shut up,' or cry, even in front of your own family.
As for 'Supernatural,' I had seen many episodes and enjoyed the show before my audition.
When we were doing 'The West Wing,' the hardest thing about doing 'The West Wing' was being compared to yourself. You go out there and want every episode to be as good as your best episode. I wrote 88 episodes of 'The West Wing,' and when you do that, one of them is going to be your 88th best, so your 88th best better be pretty good.
If a man becomes more mature due to certain episodes in his life, it gives him the opportunity to look at life in a much more deep way. I believe the artist and the man work parallel, with the same feelings, the same soul, the same sensitivity.
I actually come from comics, and I'm big on comics. I was reading 'Walking Dead' from the beginning. Then just being on the show, I was really lucky to work on episodes like 'Pretty Much Dead Already' and 'Clear.' I worked a lot on episodes that I didn't write.
I don't have a writer's room. I write all the shows myself. Ninety-one episodes a season, I'm sitting there at the computer writing and writing and writing because I want the voice to be authentic so that the audience is hearing from me and not other writers.
Sufferers of depression have 'episodes' the same way those who suffer from multiple sclerosis do. It comes, wipes the floor with you, and then somehow returns you to the world. But it comes back.
There was a time when I was offered two episodes of 'Alias,' that show with Jennifer Garner which J.J. Abrams did back before he became the mega producer and super successful director. I instead decided I wanted to play this family guy on a short-lived UPN 'Second Time Around.' It starred Boris Kodjoe and Nicole Ari Parker.
