“I thought if I was a fan I’d like to know what exactly these guys do [Emily, Lucas and Eric] that you can’t see, that’s so awesome. For example, in the finale, there’s a very emotional moment, and it’s a very important moment. And when we wrote it we didn’t write anything that Audrey should be doing except the dialogue. And Emily, in this very powerful moment, started singing. And I couldn’t believe it because first of all, it was incredibly moving, and second of all, how did I not think of that? But it’s those moments that happen on set that don’t happen with a lot of actors. It happens with some actors, some really good actors and it happened there with Emily.
“There was another moment with Lucas, also in the finale, and it’s this awkward moment and he has to do something that is completely Nathan. And I think if you’ve seen Lucas; he’s not anything like Nathan (first of all Nathan is way better looking, as you know). But we talked about this line and I think I gave him about six minutes of what my idea for that line was, which is impossible for an actor for hear. And he brought that Nathan awkward, formal, emotional, tortured thing, into literally two words. And I was just stood there how … that’s like a magic trick! It’s impossible!
“And then for Duke, in the episode The Farmer, there is this scene at the end, and we had written it like 12 times, and it was where Duke finds out that Audrey had betrayed him and put him in a place that you can argue she needed to, you can argue she shouldn’t have. And we wrote lines and dialogue, lines and dialogue, and then towards the end of the process we took out all of Duke’s dialogue, and we just had him sitting at the bar. And we shot it three or four times and Eric did it completely differently each time, but there was only one that had to be the one that made it into the show, and you saw the betrayal in that moment. And there’s no dialogue! It’s impossible to do that! And good actors do that.
“And you can only bring the script so far and then at that point the actor has to figure it out and take it over that one yard line (hopefully we’ve taken it that far, sometimes they have to take it the last 20 yards) and that’s the longest yard. And that’s what these three do when they’re up there. And you see it on the screen all the time and you won’t know where it came from, but we know. And it’s incredible.”
