Whenever I pick a script, I make sure I'm choosing something I would want to watch. And 'Quantico' was something I'd definitely want to watch. As soon as I read the pilot - and I read 26 this season - I knew this was it.
The moment when you find out when you shoot the pilot - getting the pilot is a small victory. You shoot the pilot, and when you get picked up, that's a huge victory right there.
I was influenced by many, many different people in my student years, and I was always, I guess, immersed in a Navy environment, and so, obviously, that had a big impact when I decided what I wanted to do was go and be a Navy pilot. I was very familiar with the Navy community and felt very comfortable with it.
I used to be a calligrapher for weddings and events - that was my side job while I was auditioning. I think handwritten notes are a lost art form. When I booked my first pilot, my dad wrote me a letter that I still have. The idea of someone taking the time to put pen to paper is really special.
The audition process for 'Are You There, Chelsea?' was overwhelming and exciting. It was my first pilot season and one of the first pilots I auditioned for.
If crimes are committed, they are committed by people; they are not committed by some free-floating entity. These companies and other entities don't operate on automatic pilot. There are individuals that make decisions - and some make the right decisions, and some make the wrong decisions.
I got to do Disney Sunday movies. I got to do a TV pilot there. And it really helped me to realise that I needed to not just be a writer, but a producer, to see my work up on the screen the way I wanted it to look and play.
Pilot season in L.A. is just this blood bath. They make so many pilots, and such a small percentage are picked up. And then if you are picked up, there are so many variables. You have to get a good time slot, and you have to get promoted. And then you have to thrive in that time slot.
My dad is a pilot so I think I was born with the travel bug.
When 'Twin Peaks' happened the first time, I was a stage actor in Seattle. I was called in for an audition for this pilot, and at that time, it was called 'Northwest Passage,' and nobody knew anything. I thought, 'Oh, okay, Lewis and Clark.' And from that moment, I fell down the rabbit hole.
When I was younger I wanted to be an airline pilot, but that lasted for about 30 seconds.
I kind of joke that creating franchises is a lot like directing pilot episodes of TV series. You set a look and feel and kind of pass it on.
Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience - ideally, a test pilot background.
I got my private pilot's license in autumn 1986.
I was only 11 when we filmed the pilot. The idea of a rapper being a star on a sitcom just wasn't heard of.
'Boldface' is a pilot term, a magic word to describe the procedures that could, in a crisis, save your life. We say that 'boldface is written in blood' because often it's created in response to an accident investigation. It highlights the series of steps that should have been taken to avoid a fatal crash, but weren't.
The '7500' is with Leslie Bibb. It's a big ensemble with a lot of really good people. I play the pilot of the 747 that something happens on as it crosses the Pacific. It's going to do what 'Jaws' did to the ocean. Not make people want to get on!
We never had books at home, but my dad, seeing how keen I was to read, took me to Islington Library when I was about eight and we pulled out two - a Biggles and a science fiction novel. I never got the ace fighter pilot but fell in love with all things to do with the future and space. Isaac Asimov soon became my guiding star.
Pilot season tends to be grueling, because you can be thrown all of these auditions at once - last-minute, always - and you're going on three a day, especially back in the day.
Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered.
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
I'm going to go do a Netflix series. It's straight-to-series, 10 episodes, probably go for three seasons. I'm going to direct the pilot and hopefully the last episode of the first season. The show is 'Seven Seconds.'
On 'Masters of Sex,' especially in the pilot, everybody was showing up word-perfect, and you're expected to show up word-perfect.
'Proof' is a really cool pilot that I was lucky enough to read by Rob Braggin for TNT that's about a surgeon who's an agnostic, tough, grounded, scientific mind and she's hired by a Steve Jobs-type who's just been diagnosed with cancer to focus on near death experiences and what happens when you die.
I was always accepted at par value. I wore the uniform of a Pan Am pilot; therefore, I must be a Pan Am pilot.
I think the core of Jaime Lannister is actually that final line in the pilot when he says, 'The things I do for love.' He might do horrible things - and they are truly, some of them, horrific. There's no excuses. But he does it out of what he sees as a necessity, out of love.
There were moments where Supergirl gets a thrashing in the pilot, where if a man in the 'Flash' or 'Arrow' pilot got beat up, people didn't visibly wince. And I watched in testing, people in the audience really became uncomfortable by the fisticuffs and the action. But then, they were elated and cheering at the end.
Dad endorsed my learning to fly so he would have a live-in pilot, one he could get in touch with at any time.
Very few pilots even know how to read Morse code anymore. But if a pilot could read Morse code, he could tell which beacon he was approaching by the code that was flashing from it.
In 1994, to motivate me to complete my pilot's license, my good friend, Gregg Maryniak, gave me Charles Lindbergh's autobiography of his solo flight across the Atlantic.
One of the worst things about being an actor, besides people being nice to you and getting free stuff all the time - but really, one of the worst things is not knowing what's coming next. You could shoot a pilot, and they could have you on hold for six months waiting to find out what is going to happen with the show, and you're locked into it.
Having kids has proven to be this amazing - for me, this amazing source of ideas of anecdotes, of examples, I can test my own kids without human subject permission, so they pilot - I pilot my ideas on them. And so it is a tremendous advantage to have kids if you're going to be a developmental psychologist.
It's always interesting for me to watch the pilot of an established show because you see how the writers and actors weren't really sure what the show was and what the dynamics were. If you look at the pilot for 'Seinfeld,' for example, it's practically unrecognizable.
It's so hard to make a comedy pilot and have a cool idea.
When you accept a role in a pilot, you automatically sign up for five years. You think it's scary to walk down the aisle? Try signing a five-year contract for a show you may not want to be part of down the road.
I've had a private pilot's license for years and flown all round the U.K. and over to France.
