Interview with Peter Scolari, of 'Girls,' 'Bosom Buddies' and 'Newhart' fame

Whether it’s on the stage, in film, on TV or voice work, actor Peter Scolari has seemingly done it all.

Although perhaps best known for his work as Henry/Hilde Desmond on Bosom Buddies and Michael Harris on Newhart, the actor has performed in a number of popular works, like The Love Boat, The Twilight Zone , The Drew Carey Show, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show, The King of Queens, Ally McBeal, ER, The West Wing, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, The Polar Express, Reba, American Dad and White Collar, just literally to name a few.

These days, younger viewers perhaps best know Scolari as Tad, a.k.a. Hannah’s Dad, on Girls. While the actor has been around literally since the pilot, his new and shocking arc starting with tonight’s “Tad & Loreen & Avi & Shanaz” has the actor out of his comfort zone and still experimenting as a performer. A highly thoughtful and experienced professional, Scolari talks to us about his character's transformation, his process as an actor and also his upcoming projects. Check out our exclusive interview below.

Image courtesy of INFphoto.com

Note: this interview contains spoilers from the fourth season of Girls.

TCC: Tad always was, and I think still is, a pivotal mentor figure for Hannah, so especially with these next couple episodes coming up where he’s now in a more vulnerable position, how do you approach that as an actor?

PS: Gee, I don’t know if I have an approach. I don’t mean to dodge your question. I’m looking for words with which to say. You know, he’s articulating a point of view. But the question is intriguing to me because you’re sorta pointing up something I haven’t given any thought to, which is that for the character, some of his skill-set, you could say, or his reason for living is deeply compromised. How can you be a mentor to anyone when you have, by hint of your actions and choices you made, you’ve taken yourself off the playing board.

This is something Tad has done, ironically or paradoxically. He’s taken himself out of the game. He’s the one who needs help. I know this was certainly part of the thinking and driving force behind what Lena and Jenni Konner set out to do when they crafted this storyline. They said “We really want to take Tad out of any area of comfort or safety, and put him, you know, in this place where he’s a fish out of water.” Typically in a TV show or a film, a character might come out and, not unrealistically, go to a place where they’re better for it. Their lives improved. And their experiences are more specific to who they are, and that’s not what we’ve done on Girls.

Not to set us apart and say we’re getting it right. It’s not about that. It’s just particular to this man and this life and this experience. He comes out and speaks a very personal truth and it doesn’t go so well. So he’s not going to be mentoring anyone anytime soon.

TCC: Yeah, and something that you were hinting at, and something I was really curious about, is the creative process behind the show. Especially someone like you whose been involved with both the creative and acting process. Could you explain how that works (on Girls) especially with this storyline?

PS: Yeah, well thanks, especially with this storyline. Historically, with Girls, I’ve enjoyed this somewhat privileged position of being older than everyone else, and having made, arguably, more television minutes and hours in all my years and getting to be funny a lot. So typically, in previous years, on episodes of Girls, we’ll film a version of the scene as it was written on the page and then typically Lena, or someone acting in her stint —someone else is directing — will say “Alright, well now let’s film this scene again and let Peter say whatever comes into his head.”

I’ve really enjoyed that. And sometimes I take a perverse, egotistical pride when someone says “Oh I loved that thing you said on an episode of Girls the other night.” And I won’t, on some deference to my humility, I won’t say to that person, “Oh I actually made that up, now that you mention it. That was me improvising idea.” I won’t say that, but it’s in my head. I go “Oh, that’s really cool. I said that.”

But in filming this past season of Girls we’re seeing now, week to week, my words were, and my story was —we held to it, pretty much. Because there’s no time for levity.

TCC: Right

PS Something has…some wind has been taken out of this man’s sails, and he never would have thought it. Never would have believed it possible, because in Disneyland, and in some people’s personal experience, when they make this life changing decision, things go well. We’re on the right track and everything’s going to be OK, and that’s not the story we’re telling on Girls.

And for me, as an actor playing it, I’ve been uncomfortable. Not because I disagree with the storyline: I’m honored to be asked to act it and to craft it and to collaborate. But my job is to carry this man’s truth along through the storyline, and it doesn’t turn out to be a comfortable transport. Does that answer your question at all? * laughs *

TCC: Oh yeah. * laughs * That actually leads me to another one I was thinking of. Especially with this being a really big learning curve for Tad, I was curious, as far as your acting preparation goes, did you do any preparation for that change, or did you just go with it in the moment, as it were?

PS: You know, at the risk of sounding grand Will — and I tend not to be — but let’s bare in mind that I am an actor, I can be grand without trying to. Set myself apart by any means. But if I gathered any kind of preparation, I think, more than anything else, it was to walk onto the set unprepared, and far less prepared than I otherwise may be. In the shallowest sense, working in comedy I try to get in a good mood, even if I’m not. Over a morning or a breakfast or a cup of coffee, I’ll put my bulls**t aside so that I can be silly. Sometimes in direct contradiction to how difficult my life can be to me that day, I’ll just say, “Well, f**k that bulls**t” and I can go and be loose and silly.

I didn’t make that preparation in filming episodes of Girls this year. I just went in naked to the experience. I went in and said “Alright, well have your way with me. Let’s do this thing.” Not fatalistic, but allowing my wholesomeness to get the best of me. You know, I am kind of a square person at heart, and I try to hide it with sophistication and wit and nuance of thought and ideas and all that. But at the core, I have to be honest with you, that it was a great advantage in making these episodes in making these episodes as a really wholesome guy whose injured and easily disappointed and I let all of that in.

TCC: That sounds very liberating, especially with the whole storyline

PS: I guess. Liberating in the sense that it enabled me to do the work. I didn’t feel personally liberated * laughs * I felt uncomfortable in the aftermath of a lot of the work, which is not typical of me. Usually I take away a sort of gamesman sort of pride in having had a good day. Oh, I hit the ball well. Oh, I got three-for-four, I was funny, I was loose. I didn’t come with any of those wins, you know, those small triumphs. I came away just feeling miserable a lot of the time.

TCC: Oh wow.

PS: Yeah.

TCC: So how far back was the filming process for this season?

PS: Almost a year. I think we started in late March, early April. These scenes, arguably the most climatic of them, were in July and August of last year.

TCC: So have you gotten any word on what’s going to be happening in season five yet?

PS: Oh no, they don’t tell us these things, Will. We’re just silly actors. We needn’t worry our pretty heads about it. I’m being glib and sarcastic. But I know in the spirit of things that was I was left with at the end of filming the final episodes last year was a sense of encouragement of, “Oh don’t worry. We’re not going to leave your character.” I hope I’m not creating any spoiler alerts. I don’t think so. It was just “We’re not going to leave your character out there in the wind. We’re going to look at where he is and why that is and deal with it.” So I know that’s tempting.

TCC: Especially with someone like you who balances all these different mediums as far as acting, the stage, film, TV, I’ve always been curious as an actor how you balance the work and personal life of all that.

PS: Typically, there’s not all that much to balance, for me personally, because as you get older, there’s this aggregate to yourself as an actor. You can always go into your bag of tricks and things that you’ve done well and if you’re smart, you’ll reconfigure the settings. You won’t do the things that you’ve done in the same way that you’ve done them before. You just won’t.

Because there are other actors who are looking at you, who know how you do your work. And for those people, very often, and for myself as an audience for my own work, I’ll look at what I do and say, “Do it better. And for not better, do it differently.” And in some cases you say, “Do it as well as you did when you were 19 or 29 or 39.” I could go on with these numbers, unfortunately. And don’t be ashamed to have an ad-libbed, comedic play as it did so many years ago with these lines and this context.

But typically, I just don’t have to balance out very much personally, except not to be in a s**tty mood on a given day or not let my outside problems affect my inside work. But very little of that was at play as I made these episodes last year that are airing this season. I found that I felt very exposed all the time and almost had my feelings hurt.

* beat * Ain’t that strange? I shared that with you somewhat confidentiality with your massive audience * laughs * as I reflect upon that, but I feel that is what actors that are typically working in feature films experience, and some of them are crazy-go nuts. And I make fun of them in casual conversation and find myself very much like them in my own experience. Having the character’s feelings take shape and feel home and I didn’t think about that in the moment. I’ve had about five-to-six months to reflect upon that, and that makes a lot more sense now.

TCC: Yeah definitely. So it sounds like you feel more critical as an actor as you get older and (act) more? That’s kind of surprising to me.

PS: Well, not critical in the sense of taking an inventory and saying “Find this and you’ll feel satisfactory.” But I do in the sense that, surprisingly, you know, some things matter that haven’t mattered to me before. Maybe that’s an evolution. I hope so.

TCC: Yeah, it sounds like one at least. Since I am starting to run out of time, two things I really wanted to make sure I ask: Especially with this show being one almost squarely centered on millennials, how do you approach it as someone whose worked in the business for a couple decades prior than almost everyone else?

PS: Well, it’s a great question. It’s a pointed one for me, because of my personal experience and I have two fully-grown young men, Nick and Joe Scolari, my mid-20-something year-old children from an earlier marriage. But I also have, from another previous marriage, a nearly 16 and nearly 14-year-old son and daughter, respectively. So I have my own millennials, and even to share with you in confidence, I’ve had a very strong reaction to Lena from my very first day working with her. This sort of wonderment of her talent, her wherewithal, her drive and her versatility, her willingness to learn and to develop and evolve just blows my mind.

I guess that’s the real answer to your question. That’s my coping mechanism. That’s how I kinda stay crisp and focused is to keep up and to stay in tune with this younger rhythm and this younger beat is a process in itself. This sorta living, breathing thing in making a television show in 2012, 2013, 2014. And I feel very lucky to be a part of it.

TCC: Yeah

PS: I sound like an old geezer. You know, “I stay young! I just stay young by staying up with the whippersnappers.” But, you know, to a certain extent, that’s really it. There’s nothing really more fancy than that.

TCC: Just before you go, are you working on any other projects at the moment?

PS: I’d direct your attention, somewhat proudly, to my recurring role on Gotham. In a complete, 180-degree turn, I get to play this evil — that sounds like an oversimplification — this complex, dangerous man whose the commissioner of police in this prequel world of Batman, this Gotham. And so I’m soon to film my fourth episode, as that moves along, in the next week or so, and there’s a whole other universe of television.

More than anything else, I want to get back on stage, and there are plans in the works to make that happen. But meanwhile, I’m having a great time jumping back-and-forth. We’ll be back in Girls in a month, and I’m going to finish the first season of Gotham in a week. This is a very nice and exciting time.

Girls airs Sunday at 9 p.m. EST on HBO.