- 6 minutes ago
"The sheer fact that Netflix respected this content as much as they did, and gave it the financial resources and the artistic freedom... I've never, ever seen anything like that on that level and I'd be surprised to see it happen again," Harris said
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Short filmTranscript
00:03welcome to another episode of in studio I'm joined today by someone who needs
00:08no introduction but I'll do it anyway Neil Patrick Harris what up thank you
00:12for coming and I was just saying to you before we start rolling I was I was
00:16nervous today to have you here just because I feel like flattery was the
00:21best way to start an interview right but like I feel like you could probably do
00:24everyone's job in this room even better than even my job better than I could so
00:28let's do it all maybe at the end we should switch places but do you ever get
00:31nervous though um I do yeah I've always thought I've always thought that it was
00:38a good skill set to keep learning new skill sets you know and so since I've
00:44been working for a long time I'm 45 I've been working since I was 13 years old
00:4912 or 13 but I didn't want to feel like I only knew and was capable of doing this
00:55one type of thing so I I did a mo I did a single camera half hour TV show for
01:01Steven Bochco and that was super cool but I learned for four years how to stand
01:07pretty perfect how to walk into a scene and how to hit my mark without looking
01:13down and how to not sway so that the cameraman was happy with me and how to
01:17always have the focus guy happy that you don't do this a lot so they don't screw up and how
01:23to pretty much
01:23stand still and do the scene because in order to make the day especially as a
01:28child actor who can only work so many hours a day by law you couldn't pontificate
01:34and wander around because then they would have to move the cameras and shoot other
01:38angles so I got really good at walking in and standing still which turned out to
01:44be a detriment when I tried to do something else like theater where you
01:48need to walk around and I didn't know I finished Doogie Howser and I said I don't
01:52even know how to move my arm I don't even I'm used to standing still and so I
01:56don't even know where like I had to do Alexander technique and these things to
02:01learn how to just use your body so then I delved into theater stuff and and became
02:07sort of in entranced with that but that requires a largeness well kind of a
02:15duality of largeness mixed with intimacy so that the person in the front row doesn't
02:21think you're doing Grand Gunyal and the people in the balcony don't feel like or
02:27do get to feel like they're part of part of the process which is an
02:31interesting dynamic but then when you want to do a feature film say you can't
02:35be that big because the cameras were right here so I just find that all
02:41fascinating I like the flop sweat nervousness of coming up with something
02:47new that said my recurring nightmare dream it's always that I'm in a school
02:53and I don't know I'm in the new kid at a school and I have my my list of what
02:58classes they're on I don't know where they are I don't know my locker is and the
03:02bell is ringing and I'm trying to find my way so that's interesting that I sort of
03:06take it on and look forward to it and think that regardless of your age you
03:11should be convinced that there's more to learn and horny to learn it at the same
03:19time I guess it doesn't make me nervous well there's so much more to learn from
03:23you and I'm just tempted to like finish this interview like that now that would
03:27be awkward but uh by the way you should teach your own master class which they're
03:31doing now just listening to what that answer that you should you need one of
03:34those but that's not they asked me to teach a master class you know talk you're
03:37talking about that yeah yeah the online thing why what would I teach this was
03:41what like like an acting master that doesn't you just unpack that answer you
03:46just gave and and that would be the syllabus of like I don't like moving your
03:49arm like movement and you know for the state I mean we'll get back to that how
03:54to do a bunch of different things yeah sort of sort but well by Neil Patrick
03:59here award-winning results which we have to talk about later but we have to
04:02talk about why you're actually here which is a series of unfortunate events on
04:06Netflix congratulations by the way I know the third season third and final
04:10season was on Netflix at the start of this year I have to just ask you I mean
04:14first of all are you are you nervous but second of all the next question is
04:18just emotional questions are you sad that it's over no I'm not sad that it's
04:24over and I would really only say that in this context because if I said that on a
04:29talk show or a chat show it would it would elicit a laugh as if I was glad that
04:34it's done and I'm I'm not glad that it's done but we all worked really
04:42legitimately hard and a very full-body an exhaustive way to make three seasons of
04:50this show to have every book in Daniel Handler's 13 book canon be split into two
04:56part one and part two of 12 of the books and then the 13th book was just a single
05:01one called the end that was all intentional so we were running like we
05:07were sprinting a marathon but we knew that there was an end to it a finish
05:12line so we were all pretty beaten up and exhausted I mean I we filmed it in
05:18Vancouver British Columbia which is amazing my family lives in New York which
05:24was a lot of airfare red eyes which was kind of grueling there was a two and a
05:31half hours of prosthetic makeup every morning so if I was first up at 7 a.m. I
05:36had to get there at 4 12 so there was a lot of logistics that were complicated
05:42but the sheer fact that Netflix respected this content as much as they did gave it
05:50the financial resources and the artistic freedom to allow everyone that was
05:56creating it to really create it with capital letters I've never ever seen any
06:03thing like that with on that level and I'd be surprised to see it happen again to
06:10honor what to honor this content right that's for kids but not really it's dark
06:18and acerbic and it's kind of scary and the narrator's dour Patrick Warburton's very serious
06:24so it's not kids fodder and every episode looks expensive was expensive filled filmed
06:31on sets that were completely fully realized the production value alone is pretty astonishing for
06:36any show and then to give us these three seasons to let us do this thing and proudly stumble away
06:45at the end of it
06:47I'll look back on it with great appreciation and pride
06:51yeah and and as you should I I I love your description of it where you say it's like an
06:57art piece that can sort of sit there on the shelf and be consumed by audiences and it feels there's
07:01it feels timeless and it looks so beautiful
07:04um but you mentioned yet it still loses the producers guild of america award to sesame
07:10i can't believe that can we talk about that for 20 minutes we can talk about that i i do
07:14want to ask you about sesame street because you you've been on sesame street
07:17i love sesame street yeah i watched them i've been on the show you've been on the show
07:21yeah producers guild of productions from production standpoint no that's laziness yeah and
07:28well i'm upset about it you should yeah i understandably so i lost the emmy to to sesame
07:35street and that's okay because you know sesame street's great it's the producers guild yeah
07:41they should respect that girl yeah well the the frustrating thing that i that i found is just that
07:48it is it competes in the children's categories just because it's not it it's there's something there for
07:53everyone i found when i was watching it i had to pause a couple of times to catch all of
07:58the jokes because
07:59it's so fast it's so acerbic it's so funny it's it's really rich it moves like at lightning speed
08:05sometimes um through scenes and you know uh uh characters lives it's just it's so well done and
08:12barry sonnefeld's edict was faster flatter better so he just wanted people to talk very quickly but
08:19without a lot of spin yeah um so when you look at the season three like the penultimate peril episodes
08:24that take place in this hotel denouement all the previous casts uh of characters have come back
08:30it is very very fast it's worth re-watching or pausing and rewinding just to catch certain things
08:37that have been said and i appreciate netflix on a myriad of levels but one is i know that they
08:44have thought a lot about how to recognize this show or how to try to recognize this show and if
08:52you
08:52and they looked at all of the different options because it's not really a comedy
08:56but it's not really a drama i mean they have dramatic shows that they're that are fully that
09:02and and so if you tried to promote it as a comedy you're competing against
09:10you know mrs maysell right glow glow is like some unbelievable hilarious shows and while this show's
09:17funny it's unique so i think they steered towards children's but and then you're competing with
09:23fuller house and sesame street which is kind of apples and oranges i don't mean i literally don't
09:28mean that this is disparaging it's just the producers what hurt my soul yeah by the way do
09:32you know that there's like a sci-fi.com like ranking of of neil patrick harris's costumes on
09:37uh this series and for real yeah and i and it was good it was a nice refresher for me
09:42to remember
09:43all the costumes that you wore throughout this because i just watched season three as a refresher
09:46but uh uh you wore some great things so i'm curious do you have a favorite
09:54they were all so they were all pretty intense i got to play olaf for a while then i turned
09:59into
09:59stefano and he had a long beard uh big thick super thick glasses and i wanted to do
10:05the really thick glasses so that it made my eyes really big when you looked through them but in
10:11doing so i couldn't see anything so i had the option of either wearing contact lenses to counter
10:15act that but then when i wasn't wearing the glasses everything was really weird again
10:19so i just when i had them on i couldn't see anything which is kind of fun and i shaved
10:23my
10:23head bald that was disarming watched the tony awards that year yeah it's shocking um then after
10:30that i played shirley saint ives and she was a she was a redhead gorgeous hot mess and that
10:38was fun a lot of padding hip padding spanks uh boobs at home in west hollywood or in vancouver
10:46no in vancouver i had done head big before so i knew my way around drag a little bit but
10:52um
10:53that was fun mainly just to make everyone laugh yeah off camera and there's american tourist dad
11:00gunther gunther was really fun because he was a goutier type of person but everything was very
11:07rigid so it was challenging and taxing on my body because i'm used to being able to go like that
11:14if
11:15i want to but this collar that i had was super starchy and he had these fake teeth and these
11:20big glasses
11:20and the hair and everything so everything was very posh and you know fancy and that was cool the hardest
11:27was probably captain sham he was uh he he had a peg leg and a big other false teeth like
11:37wooden teeth
11:38they were practically carved you know and a eye patch so with the eye patch i could only really
11:45i didn't have much peripheral vision i couldn't my depth of field was odd but the peg leg was very
11:51strange
11:52because we just yanked my leg up so they they created this harness and then my foot had a sock
12:01that was velcro and then that would my foot would essentially just attach to my butt right and then
12:06we'd just cinch it all up so that it was really torqued up i'm pretty flexible like that and then
12:11they
12:11i would just put my foot my leg and my knee in this actual peg leg situation so it worked
12:19as a peg leg
12:20but um it was kind of hard to walk around could you just keep it there for hours all yanked
12:25up like
12:25that i tried to but your body rejects that kind of ideal very good blood circulation all right method
12:31actor calm it down yeah we have circulation to deal with we need you to live through the rest of
12:37the
12:37series but i think it was fun and also just as an actor uh in in actor speak it was
12:43fun to not just
12:44be doing the cabinet of dr kilgari you know where you're just putting on different costumes and and
12:51being fletch which by the way someone needs to redo fletch i'm just saying yeah um but it was count
12:57olaf
12:58putting on these costumes and these characters that he was put that he was portraying had to be
13:05believable enough that the adults couldn't recognize him but ridiculous enough that the
13:09kids couldn't believe that the adults couldn't recognize him so it wasn't neil playing different
13:14characters it was olaf it was neil playing olaf playing different characters so i was a little
13:20bit of a mindfuck in that regard because i kept wondering should i be more overt or should i be
13:26subtler but if i'm subtler and better as the character does that defy what and belie what count
13:34olaf is which is a terrible actor so i was i was constantly sort of asking barry when i'm surely
13:40st ives and i'm talking like this is that too is that too different should i like be breaking character
13:47every once in a while so we played around with that it was fun wow it's just sitting here with
13:52you just another reminder just the great work you did on that uh on the whole thing it was really
13:57astonishing and um but you mentioned being a kid uh you know starting out when you were a teenager
14:04younger 12 12 um you work with a lot of kids on the show and who are phenomenal too it
14:10was just also
14:10remarkable to watch how mature and how how their performances have nuance too and you know every
14:16flash of the baby just brought a smile to my face you know when you worked with these kids did
14:22and i know
14:23your own kids were on the show too how how much has changed from being a child actor today uh
14:29than when
14:30you start first started that i don't think much has changed at all it's a very demanding request to have
14:44uh human beings who are not trained with a skill uh required to perform with a laser precision
14:55uh take after take after take after take a skill that you really need to be trained to do and
15:01if you
15:01train too early to do it then you're not that interesting because it all feels sort of
15:07the overly theatrical and phony you hire kids because they're innately good they just have this sort of
15:12x-factor watchability but those same people have to spend hours and hours and hours every day doing
15:21the same thing in repetition but a little bit different every time hitting their marks but not
15:26feeling like they're required to do so there's a lot of skill in it and when you're a kid that
15:32doesn't
15:33that doesn't have a lot of experience it's a tricky dynamic and it was hard for them they were tired
15:38because they had also by the way three hours of school a day louis from the uk so he was
15:43studying
15:44for his massive tests that determine his adult future while he's also having to regurgitate
15:52monologues about losing his parents while climbing the side of a mountain so it was pretty herculean what
16:00they were asked to do and uh and these kids were really good wow i scared the little one you
16:07did yeah
16:07what happened little presley well in season one she was really little baby little and so there was
16:13a scene of one of olaf's beginning scenes where he picks up the baby and he holds her over a
16:18table
16:18drunkenly and the kids are very nervous and he laughs and almost drops her and then loses interest slaps
16:25klaus and so for one of the takes well we had a fake baby a weird like rubber baby that
16:33was very scary
16:34would be a great horror movie and and we used that but it just kind of looked like this weird
16:38rubber
16:38baby and so we used presley for one of them and i pick her up and i was safe i
16:45wasn't drunk or or just
16:46not caring but i was still moving around in a precarious way and she did not like that understandably
16:55crying as you would which was what the baby in the scene was supposed to be doing so it all
17:00looked
17:01great but from that point on she did not want to spend much time with me and when we did
17:06spend
17:06time together i mean we spent a lot of time together where i was nice talking like myself
17:14smiling but still when we would say action i'd have to glare at them and say what are you looking
17:20at child get out of here or else this poor kid is three two years old three years old
17:27so i probably owe her some therapy bills i wondered that because there's a lot thrown at her
17:34you mentioned barney stinson i'm i'm somebody when i go home sometimes from work this feels very
17:39vintage but just to turn on the television and see what's on to sort of just decompress from the day
17:45and often how i met your mother is on and and it's still it it's still fantastic it's on the
17:51it's on
17:53paid for that number one number two do you think what but what is so interesting to look at barney
17:59stinson from today's lens is like do you think that somebody that a character like barney since it
18:04could be written today in today's environment sure well the structure of how i met your mother was a big
18:10flashback story that future ted is telling his children so the nice thing about that structure is that it
18:17didn't have to play out linear linearly uh and and ted's interpretations were and the storytelling was
18:27likely more uh was likely larger and more unrealistic than actually happened so barney could be more
18:35ridiculous in his flirtations and his overt uh stupidity because i think it was ted telling the story
18:43as opposed to actually what actually happened so yeah i think i think everyone wants to have
18:49not everyone i think many people want to have that wingman friend that is the devil over their
18:55shoulder that will say not just challenge you to do it but grab you and make you do it right
19:02even if it goes terribly wrong barney would just lie later and say that it went incredibly right he was
19:08delusional and super fun got to wear cool suits and make up catchphrases and do all that so
19:13yes i was you're always wary with a multi-camera sitcom of of being the one who has the urkel
19:21catchphrase
19:22or that wears the silly jackets or gets you know and gets put in a smaller box of a singular
19:28thing
19:29and uh they wrote barney in such a way that he got to be more expansive and be more ridiculous
19:35and yet
19:36still be pretty uh hip and cool this has been so fun thank you uh yeah this has been great
19:42i congratulations on
19:43the end of this series if you guys have not checked out a series of unfortunate events check it out
19:47on
19:47netflix streaming all three seasons right now yeah please do and watch more in studio interviews at
19:53thr.com and we'll see you next time bye
19:56you
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