Navigation 001.Index 002.Print 003.Online 004.Film 005.Theater 006.Production Notes Lee Pace, the main star of "Pushing Daisies," promotes the show in Brazil Português Séries Online Translated by Marcela March 23, 2008 Showing a lot of sympathy, Lee Pace, the star of PUSHING DAISIES, talked with the Brazilian journalists last Thursday afternoon (03/20), in Sao Paulo. The “Séries Online” took part in a couple of conversations with the actor, who insisted on asking the names of all the reporters and thanked them for coming, because we were on a “Brazilian Holiday”. The 29 year old actor arrived for the interviews with a casual look – a pair of jeans, white shirt and sneakers – soon he captured everyone’s attention with his height (1,91m), he´s more good-looking in person. In the beginning he was a little shy, but he got more comfortable and answered all the question with a smile on his face. Lee Pace started his career on the stage, after graduating from the prestigious Juilliard School. His first big role was on the made for TV movie “Soldier's Girl”, in 2003, when he played a transsexual who falls in love with a soldier. The soldier is brutally murder because of the relationship between them. This part provided him nominations from the Golden Globes, Independent Spirit Awards and a win at the Gotham Awards. In the following year, he co-stared on the show “Wonderfalls,” also from the creator of “Pushing Daisies.” When the show was cancelled he worked in several films, including, “The White Countess” (2005), “Infamous” (2006), “The Fall” (2006) and “The Good Shepherd” (2006), and soon he will be in the romantic comdey “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”, and the suspense, thriller “Possession”, with Sarah Michelle Gellar. And after being nominated for the 2008 Golden Globe Awards, in the category Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series - Musical or Comedy, Pace was chosen as one of the best '30 Under 30' actors, by the American magazine "Entertainment Weekly". Read the interview with Lee Pace: Why did you accept the lead role of “Pushing Daisies?” The truth is that I wasn´t looking for TV this year, but I thought the script was better than most of the film scripts that I read. The show was different, exciting and funny. I think Ned is a nice guy with some problems to deal with and that's a lot of good work for an actor. The creator of “Pushing Daisies” wrote the character, Ned, thinking of you. How did you get the invitation to work in the show, 'cause you had already worked together on “Wonderfalls?” I did “Wonderfalls” a few years ago, a show created by Bryan Fuller, and he really made the character, Ned, thinking of me. But, as I said, I wasn´t thinking in doing TV again. They contacted my agent, asking if I was interested, but I didn´t want to. So I read the script just to congratulate him and wish him good luck. But, then he said he had wrote the part for me. What doe the title “Pushing Daisies” mean? It´s an expression like “Six Feet Under,” but not that dark. If I remember correctly, I think the expression is “Pushing up daisies.” There are many shows with supernatural elements on TV today. Which of them do you like to watch? I don´t watch those shows very much. I think “Heroes” is a great show. The story is very good, the concept… “Lost” is also very good. But I prefer to watch when they deal with the fact of being confined on the island. The supernatural part I think is kind of weird. What else do you like to watch on TV? I really like “Damages.” It´s a fantastic show, very clever. The show keeps getting better and better, and the end is amazing. For a long time, I haven´t watched a show that makes me fell like “I want to go home soon to watch it”. How do you see American Television now? The television is going through a lot of changes now and the number of people who watch TV is very different, because they have so many options. We have hundreds of channels on cable, the internet. In th US, people can watch all the episodes for free on the channel's website, that can identify how many people watched the show. Is this the best moment for Pushing Daisies to be on TV? Definitely. On the show you play a guy who can bring people back to life. Is this something supernatural to you? It´s a little supernatural, but it´s more like a modern fairy tale. I wouldn´t call it ‘a supernatural show,’ but he has those powers. It´s a sweet story of a man who touch people and bring them back to life. And the complications that come with it. It´s funny, it´s a comedy… It´s not a drama. We have some dramatic elements: the characters have to deal with death, Ned is responsible for the death of his mother and the death of Chuck´s father. If you had this power, who would you bring back to life? No one. Because if I bring someone back to life, another person would have to die. But, otherwise, for a minute I could bring back who I wanted. How would you define the show? It´s not a comedy, it´s not a drama. It´s difficult to define. They call it a “dramedy” (a drama and comedy mix). I think that like all shows, we have our sad moments. Everytime we see Ned and Chuck together they can´t touch, I think people get a little sad. And it´s really sad they can´t touch, but it´s also funny. We have the brilliant presence of Kristin Chenoweth and the whole cast is very funny. The show has something sweet, a lot shows are darker, they have a villain. Our show is not like that, it´s sweet, it makes you feel good. Let´s talk about the visual aspect of the show, it compares to movies like “Amelie Poulan” and “Big Fish,” and it´s very different from what we are used to watching on TV. All the visual elements were created by Barry Sonnenfeld (executive producer and pilot director), while the story was on Bryan Fuller´s hands. While Bryan had all this on the paper, Barry was the one responsible for giving life to it. Although you deal with death, the show has a colorful visual theme, like a fantasy. Can we expect something darker in Ned? Yes, we already shot things like that. Ned killed Chuck´s father and when she discovered that, she wasn't very happy. This added a new level of drama. And Ned has an understanding about life and death that most of people don´t, because he lives very close to those things. He knows how hard is to kill someone, to lose someone who you love. But, he also knows how important is to live your life. Upon the premiere, “Pushing Daisies” had three Golden Globe nominations. How was this news recieved? I think the show is more like a comedy. The drama category already has so many different shows. Besides, we have musical acts on the show too. Kristin sings in the second episode. Ned touches the murder victims to bring them back to life and ask them who killed them to get the reward, this creates very funny situations. There is an episode when we bring back a man who was murdered and we ask who killed him. He says that it was his wife and we think that'll be an easy case, but then we discover that he had four wives. We can´t put our show against “The Sopranos” and expect to win. How did the writers strike affect the show? We didn´t have any new scripts after the ninth episode. We were shooting the eighth epsiode and they had to hurry and finish the ninth script, so they could solve a few things and prepare the show for the next season. It was like a mini-season. We haven´t worked since November. Do you think the strike could affect the future of the show? Yes, there was the possibility of cancellation. A lot of shows were cancelled after the end of the strike. The audience doesn´t want to know about politics, people are interest in watching their TV shows. And, at that moment, we didn´t have new things to show. We had to risk not coming back next season, we didn´t have as many episodes as the other shows. But we are going to have a big new premiere for the second season After three Golden Globe nominations, we hope win an audience that we didn´t have the first time. But, this break is also a great opportunity to review all that we did in the first season and analyze what worked and what didn´t. Change the things that didn´t worked very well. Because this is a weird show, we don´t have a model to follow. We´re still learning how to do it. You said you weren't interested in doing TV. Why? Do you watch TV? I love TV, I think the television is really good. But, at that point, I wasn´t thinking about it. It´s very hard for you to sign a six year contract for a show and commit yourself to play the same character. But I think the show is special, and Ned is special. I made the right decision, because I won´t get tired of playing this character for four, five years. I love Ned, it´s a funny world to be in. Something that I learned in the movies that I did is that your characters can be very hard and you can come back home depressed. On Pushing Daisies I have a lot of fun. It´s something that makes my life very good. How do you feel about the possibility of playing this character for so long? Are we going to see Ned going thorugh some changes? That is another thing that makes me really excited. Because we won't have the same scripts over and over again. It won´t be always Chuck and I looking for each other and thinking, “Ah, I want to touch you without dying”. It´s going get complicated as their relationship progresses. “Maybe I should be with someone that I can touch.” Considering the show is about the relationship between Ned and Chuck, this will never change, they're soulmates and they were made for each other. The things will get complicated and will be interesting in two, three years. And there is the fact that Ned is a shy man and he´s distant of the real world. Everytime you put him in a uncomfortable situation, it's fun… it makes him fun to play. Do you think Ned will have an enemy, because he´s kind of a hero? I hope not. I hope it will be just a fairy tale about a guy who does funny things, and that is it. On the next season, the stories will be more focused on the cast (Ned, Chuck, Emerson and Olive), and they will interact more together. Is there any king of ‘mitology’ behind Ned´s power? I believe there isn´t. Bryan and I already talked about it. I wish it wasn´t... I see it more like a fairy tale. What do you expect for the future of the show? I hope it lasta along time. In my opinion, I see the show going to the third season. Sometimes I think the show could last longer, others I think maybe it´s not necessary. Do you plan to do movies while you work on the show? Yes. But not at the moment. I´m enjoying this break to promote the show, like now (in Brazil). I did something like that in London, Australia. And I´ll have some movies released soon. I´ll spend more time promoting and giving interviews. We´ll come back to shoot the show in June, so it´s hard to find something now. And we have so much work on the show that I won't give up all of my free time. What is the diference working in TV v. Film? TV is faster, because you have just eight days to shoot an episode. And an episode of Pushing Daisies takes 10 or 11 days to shoot. Because the show is shot in an expensive way, cinematography, takes more time. We have only three takes to each scene. With film it's different. You rehearse, change opinions, shoot for a couple of hours, retake some scenes, go to your trailer, then two hours later you shoot a little more. You had problems with the budget, including the deadline of episodes, besides the writers strike. Did those problems affect, in some way, the team work? I don´t know how this stories of ‘problems with the budget’ come to the press, but it´s not necessarily truth. All shows have problems with the budget. Barry Sonnenfeld exceeded the budget on the pilot, and there were a lot of politics behind that. But, we don´t have this problem anymore, at least not more than all the other shows. We had a increase in our budget, but it was something that the producers already imagined since the beginning, that will be necessary to make the show. Now, the strike began when we were shooting the eightth episode, forcing the producers to work all night on the ninth episode, changing the stories to create an end to the season, cause we couldn´t imagine how much long the strike would last. The strike was very difficult for many people in LA. It affects our crew very much, they were without work and had to look for new jobs. Since the show is very expensive to be produced, it wasn´t a good idea to come back with a few episodes after the strike, so it was decided it would be best wait and promote it again next season. The creator of the show already mentioned that the show wouldn´t be a success without all the support that you received. What is the difference between the support that you received for Wonderfalls and now, with Pushing Daisies? The difference in the support that Wonderfalls received from FOX can´t even compare to the support that we have been receiveing from ABC and Warner Bros. with Pushing Daisies. They couldn´t help us more. Without their support, we could never have found a perfect tonefor the show. Pushing Daisies is a very weird show. It´s not like “Law & Order” or “CSI” where you follow the ‘recipe’ and every thing goes right. It´s very different. And without the critics help from the beginning, we could never have trusted our instincts. Is there something that you would like to change from the first season? I had a really bad hair cut in the first season (laughting). It started well, but then gets terrible! And I don´t know why, but everybody said it was good. But that is something that I would change. In fact, I would change some small stories. But that's the show and I can´t complain. There is a beautiful scene in the pilot where Ned and Chuck hold their own hands with the idea that they are holding each other's hands. Was that scene on the script or improvised? The scene was on the script. But I remember that moment very well, because it was the last scene that we shoot when we were doing the pilot, about five months before they announced the production of the show. When we finished, we didn't even know if the pilot would become a show. I remember, clearly, looking at Anna after we finished the scene and thinking, “God, I hope this goes (gets picked up for a season,)” because I loved to work with Anna and we worked very well together. We are good, good friends. Do you follow the audience opinions about the show? Actually I didn´t use to read blogs, because they kind of scared me. But there is a big movement that discusses if the show is about abstinence. That was not that intention, but people see that… I don´t think that. But it is very different from what we watch on TV. You can have a significant romantic relationship without touching someone. But it really shows another side. There is a scene, in the first season, in a dream sequence, Ned touches Chuck. I think no one really liked that. I like that. I think Ned and Chuck should never touch. The chemistry between you and Anna… Was it immediate? You two are great in the scenes and recently you were elected one of the best couples in TV in an American study. The connection between us was immediate, since the moment we met. I remember Bryan sending me a message, telling about the idea of choosing Anna to play Chuck and he was asking what I thought about it. Anna did “Closer” on Broadway and I always thought she was amazing. So, when he mentioned her name, I thought she was the perfect choice for the part. We were very good together since the beginning. The truth is that, there are many similar things in the relationship between Ned and Chuck and my relationship with Anna. She is very funny, one of the funniest people that I ever met in my life. We are very close. One of the guest star on the first season was Molly Shannon (from “Saturday Night Live”). What was her participation? Will you have more guest stars in the next season? A lot people are interested in doing the show. Big, big stars. I can´t say anything about that yet, until a contract is signed. One of the bad things about the strike is that Molly's character was suposed to appear in a lot of episodes, but now she's on another show… I hope her show fails (laughing). What can you tell us about the second season? The show hasn´t premiered on Brazilian television yet, but a lot people already follow the show on the internet. I love that! I can´t reveal a lot, obviously, but the love triangle between Chuck, Ned and Olive will heat up a lot. Olive is going to be away for a while, and when she comes back Ned will look at her with different intentions. We will have a big story in the beginning of the season involving Ned, Chuck and their parents. How has Pushing Daisies changed your life? I don´t have any free time anymore (laughing). I work sixteen hour a day… that's it. I´m more busy. But are you more recognized now? Yes, that is what happens when you do a successful TV show. People start to recognize you at the airport. But I´m taller than people imagine. “This tall guy looks like Ned”. They don´t believe that it's really me. Now I live in LA, after living in NY for ten years. But in LA people always see stars on the streets, and more famous stars than me, so things got easier for me. In fact, I´m not recognized. What have you done Brazil before this? I had a great lunch yesterday, the food was very good. I'll stay a week here and then I´ll go to Bahia... and I´m very anxious for the trip. I already visited Rio about two or three years ago in this same period. It was on the beginning of April, because I remember that was the “Lie Day” (April 01), which is my favorite holiday. I called to my mother and said “They found ecstasy in my bag…” (laughing). I woke her up and said that I was arrested in Brazil. Source