An Interview with Harry Shearer: Acting, Improvisation and More

New Orleans Board Member Artemis Preeshl had the chance to sit down with Harry Shearer in November 2013. The multitalented Shearer, best known for his roles on The Simpsons, shares thoughts and insights about his craft.

Artemis Preeshl: In the Music Industries interview What’s So Funny About That? and the acting and directing seminars at Loyola University New Orleans this week, you discussed how you approached film and TV as an actor and director. In your recent work on the Nixon project, you discussed the importance of pauses and precise words. Do you breathe and perform mannerisms like the character?

Harry Shearer: Definitely breathing. You know the part once you have a bit of a purchase on a character — their way of talking — they talk with this accent, or this tone of voice — then you go for subtle things: breathing, blinking. One of the things I noticed about Mike Wallace before Saturday Night Live, he did serial blinking. Nixon’s eyelashes were fluttering. In the interpretation of Nixon, it’s an acknowledgement that “There’s something wrong here. I’m not here. Now I’m back.” Try to incorporate anything you notice. Character is a collection of little things, anything you notice and the audience may not notice. Once you notice it, it might click with something they perceived but did not raise to their consciousness. Part of your job is to bring attention to everything you might know and incorporate it into the audience’s vision.

AP: In which vocal and physical ways do the British differ in their approach to comedy from their American counterparts in The Office?

HS: The Office is a good example of the differences between the Brits and Americans. Brits are more reticent in disturbing situations. They fidget, dart glances … show embarrassment through gestures.

Americans tend to grumble and be more vocal. Our culture encourages talking. Brits have telltale physical mannerisms when they feel culturally constrained not to say something. You can look at Brit actors do physical things. I’m talking English people — not Brits.

AP: I understand. My stepmother is English. When you listen in improvisation, what do you listen for?

HS: Actors listen in real situations — to inflections, the way it is said not just what is said, body language — you see how the other actor or character is saying something with the body. Try to pick up all cues we are programmed to pick up as humans. The danger of thinking gets in the way of this sensibility — what you think I will say next. I have great line to get in. Don’t turn off sensory mechanisms; thinking blinds you. You distract yourself with it. If you can’t think of the great thing to say, redirect yourself. What is the actor saying? How is he saying it? What it does it mean?

Trust on Set

AP: You have talked about the importance of trusting actors. Is there an experience that you had that deepened your trust in your fellow cast members?

HS: It is an accretion of a whole bunch of things. As a child actor, I worked for Jack Benny — once I had proven myself to them, they sent a signal, “We trust you.” There is a daily satisfaction in being on target. For example, Michael McKean in Spinal Tap. We did three shows a day — cranking off material — some of it good, some of it not so good. Being fired was a blessing: having to find a new place — the slights and arrows. We had to pick up for each other. The pace was so strenuous that we couldn’t do it without help. I could throw a ball in [the] air — David Landers could swing at it and get a good punch line. I couldn’t compete in punch lines reliably. We had defined roles in the group. I was the straight man who could get laughs. On my own, one of my jobs was to take that role back, be both parts. Onstage in Spinal Tap, there was a loud bank of amplifiers on one side and loud bank on the other. We couldn’t hear from either side — we were in a strangely silent world together — like a group dive. That’s a situation that encourages mutual trust. For Chris Guest’s movies, I was usually late to filming. In For Your Consideration, I was on the set on the first day in the dressing room. With great improvisers, it was intimidating and frightening. Catherine [O'Hara] was sitting next to me. She said, “I don’t know why I’m doing this. It frightens the **** out of me.” I realized, “Oh, my god, we are all in this apprehension. There’s no script.” That immediately reinforced my sense of trust in them for that project. They were all going through what I was going through.

Acting Style

AP: When you talked about the way in which Marlon Brando changed the American acting style to a more naturalistic approach, I wondered if you experienced a change in your own acting style. If so, what was the catalyst?

HS: First of all, thank you for thinking I have an acting style! I have only one real idea. Early on, I guess my answer would be that in the early days of this comedy group, I was sort of playing back in some ways the work that influenced me growing up. The comedy people fed me ideas of how to perform. If I go back, it sounds overdone and cartoony. Then I worked with America’s funniest comedian, Albert Brooks. Albert’s style was low key. It recalibrated me to a way of acting that is not trying to be as outrageously extreme as possible. Not to shy away from something that is funny but to try to incorporate a sense of realism [into it] that I can buy and believe. The earliest thing I was doing before my time with Albert was a more radical, satirical style — like a stick figure. Albert reconnected me with the influence Jack Benny had on me: An approach to inhabiting a character that had less, like the vain, miserable, terrible boss villain [character]. There was something about him that was funny and extremely likeable. Then I played a lot of Nixon because he was president in the ’70s. When I tried to pitch a script to Universal, I pitched the idea “Nixon in heaven.” On his read of the show, the studio boss asked, “Am I going to like any of these people?” I said, “Let me ask you a question … Did you hate Nixon? If I can make you like Nixon …” You can write a fairly tough role but [the character is given life] in the acting. It goes back to Benny — here’s a funny flawed human for you.

Voiceover Acting

AP: What is the most important technique to develop for voiceovers in cartoons and games?

HS: I don’t personally think of vocal acting as distinct from acting. In any situation possible in the shows I work on, I’ll be doing my lines separately in a sequential take, so I take each line, two or three lines at a time, close my eyes, and not read them. My performances are better when I’m not reading them. When you get it inside you, it’s always better. It’s more like acting, less like reading. I still just try to make a character as real as possible given the constraints. Only — do it louder.

AP: Given that you have more remote recordings rather than the cast together on the studio set, how do you interpret cues in a digital medium?

HS: You know that it is playing it in your mind. The advantage: I act with myself on the radio show. You develop a good muscle for imagining, hearing the preceding link and convincing yourself — tricking yourself — into thinking that I heard it. It’s an act of imagination. You have to do that, fit it into the context. Use your comic imagination. One gives different performances. Give them alternatives. If the preceding line is said one way, then give them options.

Comedy

AP: You compared comedy to the timing and intonation of music. How can actors and directors refine their comic timing and intonations?

HS: Timing. You can’t teach timing. The best story I heard was about a child on The Jack Benny Show. My mom told me the story. During dress rehearsal, a kid asked the question, “When the audience laughs, how long can I wait?” The kid never worked for Benny again. You know or you don’t. The innateness of comedy timing: Everybody had a different sense of it. There are a million ways to drum 4/4. It’s a personal thing. Trying to teach your sense of timing to someone is like teaching your rhythm to someone else. As a director, in the way you rehearse, you can impose a house style. You want to get an overall flow and pace of this picture. You try to force pace or pull it back up to adjust to the house style of a particular project. You can get a sense of “This show has its own pace.”

AP: Which questions can comedy answer for today’s society?

HS: Give up and move somewhere else. Today’s society can’t speak about comedy. I don’t think comedy is a place to turn for optimism. We turn to comedy for commiseration — a way of knowing it has been bad before. It’ll be bad again — we are a flawed species, we screw up. The louder people break is setup for a great punch line.

This item was originally featured in the local newsletter.