I was the first companion to kiss the Doctor. I played Grace Holloway to Paul McGann's Doctor in the 1996 TV movie. We shared three kisses, in fact: very sweet and chaste. When I took the part, I'd never even heard of 'Doctor Who.' No one warned me that the kisses would be a big deal.
When I grew up in America, I didn't see anyone who looked like me on TV. I feel overwhelmed with the things that people have said to me. When I meet Indian Americans who've lived here all their lives, it's overwhelming people holding me and crying. Someone said to me, 'Thank you for making us relevant.' It's such a big thing.
When you work in TV long enough, you tend to get a little jaded with different things you have to deal with.
Gay TV has been immensely important in transforming American culture in a more gay-positive direction.
I would love to get a Moonman! I'd put it next to my other awards. I don't have a cabinet right now; they're just kind of all around my flat, one next to the TV, one in the bedroom. So, I'd have to build a cabinet.
I did a live late-night talk show called 'Creation Nation' with friends of mine. I had a sidekick and a band, and I wrote the whole thing. And it had the form of a late-night talk show, but we did it on stage because no one was giving me a TV show at the time.
You have to create characters - certainly in series TV - who people engage with. They don't have to be nice; you don't have to agree with them. But they do have to be compulsively watchable and believable and human, and you want to know what happens to them.
Now I'm on television, I'm far more conscious of my skin than I used to be - I would often leave the theatre with layers of pancake make-up still on my face, but on a medium such as TV, I have to be more fastidious.
I was joking the other day about how my real life feels like a TV show, and my TV life feels real - because, to be on Thursday nights on NBC, which is what I grew up with, has been such a big part of inspiring me. To be part of that tradition is really completely surreal, and I'm so grateful.
Some might not know that 'What's Happening' was the television version of 'Cooly High.' When I went on the audition, it was an audition for exactly that: the TV version of the movie.
Ever since the infamous quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the feds had insisted that TV game shows be honest - or that at least they didn't cheat. So as a 'Dating Game' bachelor, I didn't know what I was going to be asked. The other bachelors and I were required to concoct our answers in real time.
I've done panel shows, which I enjoy, and on those you're recording half-an-hour of TV and sometimes they film for two hours. But with 'Britain's Got Talent,' you're on camera for eight hours, with a large theatre audience watching - and in between you're being filmed for ITV2 as you eat your lunch.
I do like reality TV. I've always liked 'Survivor' since season 1.
I don't get sick of being naked, but the added pressure is staying in really good shape, because naked shape is a different kind of shape than just regular TV shape. Regular, having-your-clothes-on TV shape is intense, but naked TV shape is, I mean, you really have to watch what you eat.
Turing was always a legend among computer/geeky kids. He was such an outsider in his own time, and because of that, he was able to see things differently. It was a story that had been well told in books, onstage and on TV, but never on film.
I want to go on TV to perform. I'm not conceited, but I am good at what I do. It's just the vehicles are not there anymore.
I was watching TV one day, and I'm like, 'How did those people get on TV? I'm gonna try that. Hey, mom, I want to be on TV!' And she's like, 'OK, let's get you an agent.'
We just weren't a family that gathered around the TV. I grew up in a town where everyone was outside all the time. I was mostly in Connecticut; I spent a lot of time in Tennessee in the summers, but I was in Stamford, Connecticut.
I like transformative TV.
Actors who say they don't watch TV are stupid. I was raised by TV! And it's how I research for auditions.
We didn't have a TV because we didn't have a whole lot of money. My parents would have their friends over - their friends who thought, 'How can you live without a TV?'
TV news is not very instructive.
I grew up in Burbank - but not the Burbank of valet parking and TV studios. In the late 1950s, there was a small apartment complex on Elmwood Avenue that rented mostly to families on welfare. I lived there from age 3 to 11 and again from 14 to 18 with my mother, Shirley, and my younger sister, Toni.
I'm really getting into acting and TV. 'Sports Illustrated' is a big, iconic brand I'd like to work for, too. But TV and acting is really funny and a bit more exciting than shooting all the time.
Acting in 'Command & Conquer 3' called for me to interact with the player and to look directly into the camera, which is a big no no when filming for TV or film.
My dad is an art director for BBC TV shows, and my mum does screen printing workshops. Both of my parents played instruments, too, and my mum used to have crazy house parties when me and my brother were young - dub and garage would be banging through my house.
My mom had done some TV and commercials before I was born, and so when I was born, she knew I had a really big interest in acting because I was always acting in plays with my dolls, and they were sort of boring, because I've seen them on tape; they always involved a lot of singing and dragging them around by their hair.
I didn't want to commit to a TV show.
I remember getting out of acting school and friends of mine talking about, like, 'You know, I don't think I'm gonna do TV.' Like, people putting on these airs of being picky. And I was never a snob about it.
I've been lucky enough to work with some of the best TV directors there are, and I've learned from how they had to handle when things don't go quite according to plan.
With any of the movies I've had a chance to do, or any of the TV shows I've had a chance to contribute to, people approach me and say, 'Hey, would you like to do this?' I laugh out loud and say, 'Yes, that'd be funny.' Or, I'm very moved by what I read and say, 'Yes. How can I help you?'
We have a responsibility to show the public the kinds of truths that they don't see on the TV news or the Hollywood film.
The working-class aspirations are worse now than when I was a kid - and it was pretty bad when I was a kid. Reality TV means they are being told they are no longer a working class, they're an underclass. Young lassies want to be Jordan or Jade, but very few aspire to be the next Germaine Greer.
I've got quite a big gay following. I played a lesbian prostitute in the TV series 'Band Of Gold' but I think my following really grew when I played one in the film 'Imagine Me & You,' with Piper Perabo.
The really interesting moment will be when you have a critical mass of people engaging through the networks, more than through the press and TV. When that happens, the culture of politics has to change, moving away from controlled one-way messages towards a political culture that is more questioning.
The 800-pound gorillas of TV news are gone. When I was the White House correspondent at NBC, and Tom Brokaw was anchor, the reporters were protected.
