The Hollywood Reporter recently got behind the scenes with Parenthood actress Lauren Graham, who chatted about executive producer Jason Katims, the preparation time necessitated by the hour-long NBC comedy-drama and the difference between offscreen personal connections and onscreen chemistry.
Graham credited Parenthood’s “unusually confident showrunner” as one of the reasons things run so smoothly during production. He “knows when he can trust us to have some input and then knows when he wants things his way. He came to me at one point in the season and — he’d never said this to me before — ‘I really like this one speech as it is, and I would love it if it was just that way.’ It was really nice.”
“We start talking about the scripts the minute they come out, actually,” explained the 44-year-old actress, who plays a financially-troubled mother on the family-centered show. “And often we’re shooting two shows at a time, so they story-board it for us that way. This is even more important on this show because you’re shooting what’s going to happen in the next episode while you still haven’t finished what happens in this episode.”
Parenthood, which has its share of emotional moments, calls for Graham to do plenty of heavy lifting in the drama department. When asked if it’s possible for unacquainted actors to appear close onscreen, Graham laughed, “Oh yes, I’ve done it. The worst thing is when you really connect to somebody personally and then onscreen it’s just like, nothing is there.”
