Interview with COLIN HANKS
COLIN HANKS stars as Jack Bailey
Watch THE GOOD GUYS on Friday nights at 9 PM EST on FOX
September 23, 2010
By Lena Lamoray
FOX THE GOOD GUYS OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE: From Matt Nix ("Burn Notice"), comes THE GOOD GUYS, a new action comedy about what happens when an old-school cop and a modern-day detective expose the big picture of small crime. Once upon the 1970s, DAN STARK (Bradley Whitford) and his partner, Frank Savage, were big-shot Dallas detectives. So big, in fact, that they were lauded as American heroes after saving the Governor's son. Thirty years later, Dan Stark is a washed-up detective who spends most of his time drunk or re-hashing his glory days. A stranger to modern police work who would much rather trust his old-school police instincts, Dan has the reputation as being a bit of a wild card. Able to skate by on the heroic deeds of his yesteryear, he is still a semi-active presence on the force, and with the help of his liquor of choice, occasionally comes through to solve a petty crime. Dan's new partner, JACK BAILEY (Colin Hanks), is an ambitious, by-the-book and overall good detective, but is sometimes a bit too snarky for his own good. His habit of undermining himself has earned him a dead-end position in the department, and he is stuck solving annoying petty theft cases that nobody else wants. Worse, he's been given the thankless task of babysitting Dan, the drunk pariah who can never keep partners for long. Jack may not see it, but he has little chance of getting out of his situation; his knack for making enemies at the station has assured he is not going anywhere. His only ally is ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY LIZ TRAYNOR (Jenny Wade), a quick witted former girlfriend whom Jack hasn't quite gotten over and the one person he turns to for help with his current professional predicament. Until Jack finds his way out of this situation, he is stuck awaiting the day when he can turn everything around, get back to solving actual cases and return to being a real detective. THE GOOD GUYS is produced by Fox Television Studios. Matt Nix and Mikkel Bondesen serve as executive producers.
THE GOOD GUYS is back on a new night on FOX, so take note that now your Fridays will be totally awesome! What a way to end a dull work week with a little bit of Jack and Dan. To say that I love this show is an understatement. MATT NIX has created another masterpiece with this show and the cast is so much fun. Colin Hanks does a stupendous job playing Jack Bailey and no one wears a moustache better than Bradley Whitford as Dan Stark. Colin Hanks has starred in “Mad Men”, “W.”, “The House Bunny”, Untraceable”, “Orange County”, “Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny”, “Roswell”, “Band of Brothers” and a ton of other projects. I know where I will be on Friday nights and you need to join me. Don’t miss THE GOOD GUYS, now on Friday nights on FOX at 9 PM EST after “Human Target”!
I spoke with COLIN HANKS about THE GOOD GUYS. Colin is always pleasure to speak with and I’m stoked for the return of THE GOOD GUYS! Watch THE GOOD GUYS on Friday nights at 9 PM EST on FOX!
Lena Lamoray: Now my favorite and my reader’s favorite episode so far is “Silvio’s Way.” Can you talk about what it was like filming it and how you were able to keep a straight face with Bradley's limited attire?
COLIN HANKS: Yes, Bradley's attire was sort of an issue. I was actually gone the first day he shot in his green manny panties. I was actually gone and getting married. So I came back and had no idea what he was wearing. Apparently somewhere it exists on film, we just decided to roll on the first take, and he strips down to his green underwear and there's a big, fat close-up of me and I just sort of take him in and then just start laughing uncontrollably. So yes, that was a very fun, funny episode, an arduous episode to shoot. Most of them are. The episodes can be pretty grueling just in terms of hours and stunt work, particularly reacting to the fake punches. I threw my neck out. As with all things, filming of The Good Guys, it's a lot of fun but there's always a lot of pain mixed in and as I said earlier, you can only really appreciate it once you're counting the bruises. But when you're getting them it's really hard. It's also another lesson I've learned. It's like it's really, really difficult to put on a good face when you're hurting yourself and you're in pain, and people come up to you and say, "It's really funny." I always want to say, "No, just tell me it's really good." Because I don't want to be in pain and have you laugh at me. That is like a cruel joke.
Lena Lamoray: The Good Guys has an amazing cast. Can you talk about your chemistry with them?
COLIN HANKS: We're sort of in this weird state where we all really like each other. We all really get along. Everyone who's come to join us in our little corner of the sandbox has been great and have been great sports and have had a good time coming down to Dallas and playing with us. It's pretty much everyone that's come through has really said, "Wow, you guys are really having a good time. This is the most fun I've had on a TV show in quite some time." We try and keep it light. We try and keep it fun because if you're able to laugh during work no matter how arduous it is, it sort of comes through in the finished product. So, we have a good time. We're all great. We're sort of enjoying our honeymoon, so to speak.
More Conference Call Interview Highlights:
Q: How important are networking sites like social sites, such as Twitter and Facebook have been in the promotion of the show?
COLIN HANKS: I don't know what an end result is. I sort of started twittering or whatever you want to call it to sort of get more personally involved. Normally, conversations like these and TV appearances were all that I was doing, so I sort of took to the Twitter as a form to sort of personalizing things a little bit. I will say that it's definitely been interesting from my perspective, having met sort of direct contact with people and direct feedback from people in terms of people who really liked the show or people who really hate me. That's what happens when you get that direct line. But I like it. It's been a lot of fun. We've definitely been using it quite a bit on the show. It's been a fun experience of what is now officially the new era of social interaction. So, it's been fun.
Q: Are you facing any new challenges this season that we'll get to see play out for your character?
COLIN HANKS: Oh, every week is a new challenge with The Good Guys. Every week is a new crime that needs to be fought, so it's a lot of what you're used to and a few more surprises and things thrown in.
Q: We've seen you do a lot of comedy and drama, and in this show, you get to do both of them but tell us, how did you start off. When you were a kid, were you a funny kid who leaned towards comedy? Were you a serious kid mostly playing cops and robbers or what were you like at first?
COLIN HANKS: I'm really sort of more of a hambone more than anything else. I think that's a whole lot more entertaining than being the silent brooding type. So comedy was always really sort of the main go-to, cracking jokes. Watched a lot of SNL and stuff growing up. So, I think comedy's really sort of how I got started in terms of getting my own sense of taste and things of that nature. Comedy is the one aspect that I'm always very cognizant of, trying to keep things funny and keep things light, especially with our show. We have to balance both quite a bit. I sort of feel like sometimes that Jack is not able to be as funny as maybe he could be. So, I'm always cognizant of that, trying to throw the funny in there.
Q: Occasionally, Jack gets to do the macho stuff too. I mean, he has to kind of copy Dan and do the slides and the two guns and stuff like that. Is that fun for you, when you play the action stuff?
COLIN HANKS: I would argue that I do it just as much as Dan does. I have the bruises to show for it. So, I don't think it's one does it more than the other. We both do it quite a bit. We're both down there in Dallas sweating it out every day. It's only really fun when you're counting the bruises. It's not so much fun when you're actually getting the bruises.
Q: What was one of your favorite things on the season premier?
COLIN HANKS: To be honest, we're still so much very in the thick of it in terms of - in terms of filming the show. Everything blurs together. People say, "Oh, the premier is “Vacation." I go, "I have no idea what that means." "It was episode 107." I have no idea what that means. "It's the one where you guys get to suspended. I think I kind of remember which one you're talking about. So for me, it all sort of blurs together. What I really love is I love the show. I love the relationship that Dan and Jack are sort of growing. More than anything, I love just making the show. There's not really a specific scene that pops to my mind because that's like a Sophie's Choice. There's scenes in every episode. I can't pick one more than the other.
Q: Are there are any new regular characters that are going to be in this season?
COLIN HANKS: Oh, yes. We have some new people coming in future episodes, but I'm never one to spoil the surprise.
Q: After time away from the character, can you talk about how you're able to find your way back to Jack?
COLIN HANKS: I think more than anything, the character is sort of growing. He started off very sort of defined and by the book and very much whatever the opposite of Dan was. Now per the usual evolution of a television show and then also the evolution of a character, you sort of finding new aspects of himself, and he's doing things that maybe we didn't see in the earlier episodes. Not anything specific, just little things here and there, that sort of evolves. So it's not necessarily like having to go back to Jack. It's a constant evolving thing, and each episode is a new thing. The show's back on the air from its little sort of summer little hiatus that we had, but we've still been making it. We've been making the show since January, so I'm still very much in the thick of it. It's not like we're going back to a Rivendell or back to a Narnia. We're still very much in the thick of it.
Q: So, you're recently married. I just want to know somebody who's now on a full-time show, working on the set, how does that affect your sort of newlywed honeymoon.
COLIN HANKS: It affects every single facet of my life, both good and bad. Look, I joined the circus, and the circus holds really sort of crazy hours and relocates me to a bunch of different places around the world. Currently, I'm in Dallas, Texas. So my wife has accepted the fact that she's sort of married a clown and that she's going to be working out of Dallas, Texas, for a little while. So, it wasn't necessarily a lot of fun flying home for a weekend, getting married, and then flying back to Dallas and going to work and prolonging a honeymoon for three months, but we fit it in when we can. We make time for each other when we can and just try and make the best of it. It also helps that I married the coolest woman on the face of the earth who understands these things.
Q: What is it about Jack Bailey that attracted you to take this role?
COLIN HANKS: I like that he was a character that talked back. He wasn't a passive character that was constantly exacerbated by crazy people, zany people. So much of comedy sort of ends up being one guy who's really over the top and then the other guy that just simply reacts over the top to the zany guy. This was an open relationship. Jack is a character that talks back to Dan and lets Dan know how he's feeling and comments on Dan's stupid ideas and perceptions of the world. He's active in expressing himself, and it's not just why is the world so crazy. Jack is very much trying to make the world less crazy, while also maybe sometimes showing little bits of his crazier side. So, Jack sort of seemed like a well-rounded character in comparison to a lot of other stuff that was available to me. Also, it was a character that, like I mentioned earlier, was going to evolve. I could see where things would sort of go, and we have some options in terms of Jack evolving and changing and his relationships changing, so.
Q: I was talking to some of my colleagues the other day, and we were discussing how it might be the hardest thing in comedy to play the straight man because you have to kind of keep everything in line. How has that been for you in terms of having to play the straight man off of some of the more quirky characters on the show?
COLIN HANKS: There are times that it's been a little bit of a challenge. There are times where you sort of wish you could also chew all of the scenery as well. But more than anything else, I think this job is really made me appreciate the art of the set-up and the really just trying to set things up for Bradley as much as I can or for any of our guest stars as much as I can. Some of it is just in the delivery of a joke. Sometimes it's in the suggestion of what a joke is. Well, maybe if you said this or talking with the writers and saying, "Well, what if Dan sort of came and said this or this guest star said that." Sort of being involved in the set-up. What I've realized is it's not so much who gets to say the joke but how the joke is delivered. I have as much fun if not more fun setting someone up for a joke than I do delivering one.
Q: I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the new Friday time slot, especially being paired up with Human Target because that seems like a really interesting combination.
COLIN HANKS: I think wherever Fox would like to have us, we would be happy to be in that slot and to hopefully entertain as many people as humanly possible.
Q: Can you talk about how Jack's by-the-book belief will change and help him move forward with relationships as the season progresses?
COLIN HANKS: Well, I think any time spent with Dan there's going to be some rub-off. The more time that Dan spends with Jack, the more he realizes, "Oh well. Maybe there's a couple of ways of doing things." There's right and there's wrong, but then there's also a lot of space in the middle that is up for interpretation. I think the natural evolution of a character is to see them sort of try new things and try different stuff. As the series progresses, Jack is reminded of ridiculous things that Dan has said that then somehow turns into them catching some bad guy, being able to sniff out the criminals, and things of that nature. Then it's also just his, Jack's overall interaction with Dan. Whereas earlier in the series, it was very much, "That's disgusting. That's wrong. That's not how you should do it." Jack has accepted Dan for who he is and has accepted the fact that Dan—for better or for worse—is a good cop. So it's sort of sprinkled throughout the season.
Q: I'm wondering how much improv goes on between you and Bradley because it seems like you two would be in perfect position to just practically improv half the show.
COLIN HANKS: Well, quite honestly, there's not a whole lot of improv. I've really got to tip my hat to the writers. They really set things up so perfectly that we're able to pretty much do what's on the page, and that's fine. We'll add little variables every now and again. We'll never straight up improv anything. We'll always have the base—the script, the text, whatever you want to call it—and that will always be sort of set in stone, but then we can extrapolate off that and sort of play with things. Bradley's very, very good at sort of throwing out random phrases and saying random things that end up making everybody laugh. Every now and again, I'm able to throw in something that I think is the button to a scene and then Brad comes in and puts a button on top of my button. I always call him the one-upper because he always tends to one-up me somehow. The show and the characters are so well written and the banter between them that we're able to just sort of play off that and do that. Luckily even with the most of fine-tuned precisely chosen words, we're still able to deliver in a vein of feeling like improv.
Q: On thinking back to the last episode that aired, and you got tased. What was that like to film that because I have to say as somebody who has experienced the Tasers, you just nailed that perfectly. That was classic.
COLIN HANKS: There was a video I saw that was actually really funny of a guy getting tased, who when he was getting tased, he sounded like Chewbacca. I remember going up to Jonathan Frakes, who was directing. I said, "Look, I would like them to do something with my voice. I think that would be really funny, but I know that that will never happen because I have no control over sound or anything like that once we're finished making the episode. So, I want to try and do something here that's kind of like that.” But I also needed to make sure that whatever action I did was extremely identifiable since so many other people in the episode then copied whatever Jack did. So I just sort of put the hands up and did the little back and forth and the tase and there you went. Ironically, the entire crew did the tasing for me on the last day of the episode, which was very funny. For some reason—I don't know why—but when my wife saw the episode, she laughed a laugh that I'd never heard before and laughed hard. That was a little disconcerting when your wife laughs really hard at you getting tased. She had to watch that like three or four times, and I was just like, "What? What does this mean? What does this mean to our relationship? You're enjoying this a little too much." Never seen her laugh like that before, but it was great because then I realized, "Oh, we sort of did something right there."