"3rd rock from the sun" is about four aliens--
the high commander and his ship full of aliens
who come to the earth
and know nothing about how life is lived here
but take on the guise of human beings--
a family, the Solomons--
the father, a professor,
and his ersatz brother,
son and daughter.
And my character is
officer Don Orville-- is a policeman
in this small town of Rutherford, Ohio,
who encounters these people
and falls in love with Sally,
the large, beautiful female alien
who is actually the security chief
of this band of aliens.
She likes Don because he's militant.
He likes her because she's beautiful.
He thinks that he's just gotten lucky
with the most beautiful girl in the world.
He has no idea that lurking beneath that
is not only an alien,
but perhaps not even a female one.
And that's where we begin.
What's great about the show
is that it is simultaneously silly but clever
because it looks at the human condition in a way
of what we're all like.
Imagine, if you could,
pulling out from the way we act and looking at it.
It's ridiculous.
If you did what everybody says you're supposed to do,
you'd look like a fool.
If we lived by our little aphorisms and sayings
and all the things that we think are true,
we'd look like idiots,
and we do weekly on this show.
Well, I think
what's amazing about the whole deal
is that, in essence, you're putting on a play
in four or five days.
And what's great is that
there's a really good collaboration here
between the writers and the actors.
In the two days that you are getting it on its feet
and doing it for the producers and then for the network,
you're going through all kinds of changes,
and each of the changes makes it better.
This is one place
where it actually does get better.
You do get better lines as the week goes on.
So, by the end of the week,
you've done something really good.
Sometimes they're working into the wee, wee hours
doing rewrites,
and come show night, you feel like you've really got something
that you want to show people, that's going to make them laugh.
Well, so far my favorite was this season
because I've gotten a chance to--
this is Don and Sally's first kiss
where we wind up
in a stable
on, you know, a windswept, rainy night
with thunder crashing and a horse moving around.
I grab her and throw her on a bale of hay.
I don't get a chance to do that very often,
so that was a pretty good episode for me.
Well, because human beings are--
if you take out the language,
we're all universally ridiculous.
I mean, that's why, when you look at commercials oftentimes--
foreign commercials or English commercials
seen internationally--
when you take out the sound,
the visuals are still funny
because humanity's humanity, you know.
Well, yeah, I think that Don represents the police force.
Don has an inflated image of himself
as, you know, an enforcer of the law
and is very much...
dogmatic and dictatorial
about why that's important, and Sally feels the same way.
And Sally doesn't look at him.
I mean, she's gone out with very attractive guys.
She could have any guy, but here's somebody, like herself,
who would like to out and beat people up and shoot them.
He knows they're a strange bunch of people.
He doesn't know anything else.
He knows that they're not your average group.
Sally is not your normal woman,
but that's all part of her charm.
Don is not the cleverest man.
He doesn't pick up on it too quickly.
I don't think he'll suspect.
This is, um...
this, by far, is the best job
I've ever had
because you come in
and not only is everybody...
willing and able,
the writing is good,
there's a camaraderie between the actors,
the actors and the writers, the actors and the crew,
and you really feel like you're doing something together.
And I think
that bonnie and Terry turner, the executive producers,
and john Lithgow, our fearless leader,
have backgrounds that were very collaborative,
and they've allowed a freedom on the set
that feels great.
It's a good place to work,
and it shows up on the screen.
The fun of being an actor,
and especially in comedy,
you know, is-- it's like an equation,
you know, a math equation.
And when you would write, people laugh.
And so it's fun working the equations
week after week and getting them right.
You do a pass, and it doesn't sound quite right,
and they'll come in with a little tweak on a line.
You'll do a little something different in timing, and it gets it.
It feels great.