William H. Macy is Getting Shameless on Showtime

William H. Macy is one of our most respected and loved film, stage, and television actors.  It would be hard to list his best roles, because there are so many, but Fargo, The Cooler, Wag the Dog, Magnolia, and Boogie Nights would only be the start of the William H. Macy required viewing list. He came by the SiriusXM studios earlier this week to talk about his role as Frank on the aptly named Showtime series Shameless.  A few excerpts from that interview appear below.

Ron Bennington: William H. Macy with us, probably the edgiest show on TV right now. Sunday nights 9 o’clock, Shameless, The Gallagher family. And this is why I got into this right away, is I think there’s almost a family like that in every neighborhood in America. There’s always that one family that everybody else is going “I don’t know, but don’t start any shit with them”.

William H. Macy: I’m not sure you’re right about that. I think there are many families in every single neighborhood like this.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. And your character, I think the thing that’s amazing about Frank Gallagher is here he’s not working, he’s doing his thing. But every day is not an easy day for him.

William H. Macy: No, he’s a hard-working guy. I got the best job in Hollywood. I talk to a lot of actors. I say “would you do a tv series?” They say “Yeah, if I had your job, if I had your role”. Frank Gallagher is a functioning, but barely functioning addict alcoholic with six kids and you can’t believe what they let me do on this show. It’s outrageous stuff.

Ron Bennington: It is outrageous and yet the show still somehow, it is kind of family viewing at the end of it.

William H. Macy: It’s got a heart. It’s got a huge heart. It makes me weep. So many of the episodes, at the end of it, I’m teary eyed. I guess ’cause the mom is gone and Frank is still around. And I think because he’s an alcoholic and an addict, the kids bond. And so they’re raising themselves. And it’s got a great moral center to it.

Ron Bennington: Yeah. Really really strong strong cast. But for you, after so many years of doing theater and movies where you pick up a character, drop, did you have to fall in love with this character before you’d commit for so long?

William H. Macy: I had decided I wanted to do a TV show because I used to do a lot of independent films and that whole genre has sort of fallen apart. Because there’s a new paradigm. And I looked at about four or five things to do and nothing really blew my skirt up until this script came in. John Wells sent it to me and I read the pilot. It’s based on a British series. And I was sold. And your question’s a great one. It turns out I love coming back to this character week after week. Ask me in three years whether I’m still having a good time, but right now, I love it. And I feel like there are depths to be plumbed here that are going to go on for a long time.

Ron Bennington: But you’re feeling like the kind of films you were making, aren’t being made these days. That it’s tougher and tougher to make.

William H. Macy: They’re still making indy films, about a quarter of the number that they used to. But no one sees them. You can’t put them in theatres. It’s not cost-effective. I just got tired of doing these noble efforts that no one saw. It just doesn’t do it for me anymore. I want to be successful. I want people to see it.

Ron Bennington: Right, but if you get a call from a Mamet, Paul Thomas Anderson, the Coens, you’re going, right?

William H. Macy: I’m going.

Ron Bennington: Here’s the weird thing though, while that’s going in that direction, here’s Showtime doing the type of TV series. You guys, and Californication comes around, I mean that stuff never would have been on television years ago.

William H. Macy: No, it’s been a boon for television. In my opinion, the best stuff being done anywhere is being done on television. The best writing. Best acting. Some really imaginative story telling. And I think Shameless is a perfect example of it. It’s new what we’re doing. First of all, because it’s Showtime and they’re so brave, they put it on. It took John Wells seven years to find a home for this thing. And Showtime really took a shot. ‘Cause it’s Shameless. But it’s worked out wonderfully well. Technically, the way we shoot the thing is different too. It’s on digital cameras which are small. We always have minimum two cameras. And sometimes more. So if we come in with a big scene, a three page, four page scene that takes place in two or three different rooms, we’ll do the entire scene all the way through every single time. Usually, in the feature world, you’ll cut up a four page scene into four parts and it’s very disconcerting. You’ll say “good morning” to me at 8 o’clock in the morning and I’ll say “good morning” back to you sometimes at 10 o’clock at night by the time they get to my coverage. This, we do in real-time and the acting is better for it. The pace is up. It’s bold story telling. It’s new.

Ron Bennington: It’s a great cast all the way around and the stuff that you do with the kids is great, but then the side stuff with Joan Cusack is…

William H. Macy: Isn’t she a treasure?

Ron Bennington: She’s amazing. And has been forever. I don’t know whether I’ve ever sat down and watched something she’s done where I didn’t say that’s just dead on.

William H. Macy: She’s so bizarre and odd. She’s got a wicked sense of humor and a great comedian. But then she’ll, on a dime, turn that thing around and it’s heart breakingly truthful and real. I don’t know how she does it.

Ron Bennington: Yeah, there is something incredibly touching about her. And then the way she treats Frank and you know what I mean. You’re just like, dude this better fix you.

William H. Macy: There was a great moment in the first season. Mark Mylod who is our primary director, has this habit. He says “Well, I’m satisfied. One for yourself.” And that’s when if you want to ad lib it or change it up somehow, usually nobody does anything. We do it exactly. We did this scene last year where I’ve slept with my son’s girlfriend and he found out about it and he beats the crap out of me. So I’m lying on the couch being ministered to by Joan and I’m lying to her. I say “It was over money. I told him I’d pay him back. He just went nuts, I don’t know”. It’s because I slept with his girlfriend, but I don’t say that. So we did take after take and we got it and Mark said “Well I’m done. One for yourself.” And we started the thing and I looked at Joan and I adore her so much. And it just popped into my head. And I started to lie about why my son had beaten me up and I looked at her and I said “You know when it’s all said and done, you’re the only one who cares anything about me”. And she welled up with tears. And it was this wonderful wonderful moment. Which they put in. We kept it.

Ron Bennington: And that’s so cool too that you are able to do that. 

William H. Macy: One of the lovely things about doing a series is that I come back week after week. I really get to ply craft. And I’ve used it to try to loosen up a little bit. I’ve always been such a dutiful actor and I’m trying to be a little bit more outrageous.

Ron Bennington: At what point does it become loose though? At what point, is it physical that you’re becoming looser or is it in terms of the scripts?

William H. Macy: Yes and yes. Because we learn the lines well and my wife helped me learn lines better. She gave me this new technique and how to do it and it’s really helped. But because of that I try to go in with nothing in my head except the lines and be as outrageous and improvisatory, to not censor myself or my performance at all. To let it come out pell mell. And I’m lovin’ it. It’s a lot more fun.

Ron Bennington: It’s just so amazing for me to even hear you say that. Because I saw you in theater years ago. I saw you do “American Buffalo”. And there of course, you’re just about on stage the whole time, you guys are tearing it up. And I never thought at any point, oh this guy needs to loosen up a little bit.

William H. Macy: Well, theatre is a joy because of that. I mean when a play first opens, you’re pretty much hanging on by your fingernails. But once it’s been open for a couple of weeks and you really know it. You know it so well that you can forget it then you start to get improvisatory about it with your line readings and even with the blocking and with your intention. The best of all worlds is when two actors are really playing tennis together. You’re hitting curve balls to each other back and forth. You know what the objective is and you know what the lines are and the blocking but within that structure, mess with the other guy. Mess with him. And it makes it electric. And it is what the playwright had in mind. When you do a film, you’ve got so, you’ve spent so little time with it. You learn the lines usually the night before or two days before and you show up and you got to get it right. I’m trying not to get it right anymore. I’m trying to let it fly. And it’s because I’m in a series and I get to come back week after week.

Ron Bennington: And somewhere maybe in some of those mistakes, you find even more about the character.

William H. Macy: Yeah. I think the purpose of technique always is to free up your subconscious cause that’s where the truth lies.

Ron Bennington: Well here’s a thing about Frank though because you have a character that like Archie Bunker, you really can’t have growth to the character. At some point, you got to figure out why he stays.

William H. Macy: What an excellent point. My wonderful wife Felicity Huffman, at the end of last season, we were talking about it and I said this second season I want to do this and this and this and this. And she said maybe should you think about why Frank does what he does. What’s underneath? Dig a little deeper. It was her lovely lovely way of saying “Perhaps you should act a little better”. And she was exactly right. And I went to the writers and I said I’d like to dig a little deeper here. Frank was outrageous in the first season and I had these wonderful monologues, but it occurred to me that this story stopped while Frank held forth on some Archie Bunker kind of monologue. And I also noticed that most of them got cut considerably in the final cut. So I said give me some juice here. And boy did they step up to the plate. You can’t believe what I get to do this year.

Ron Bennington: But “Shameless” is the perfect title though. There’s no time that Frank or even the kids wake up in the morning and go “Oh why did I do that?”. You know what I mean?

William H. Macy: Emmy Rossum and Joan Cusack and I were talking about it and Joan kept saying “It’s the perfect title because think about it, I mean you want to live your life shamelessly. Who wants to live their life with shame?” And on the other hand, some of the stuff we do is shameless. So it’s a double entendre.

Ron Bennington: Well it’s a fantastic show. Sunday nights. January 8th is this season’s premiere. Also you can go On-Demand and see all last season. And you’ll catch up very very quickly and be ready for it if you haven’t seen it yet. Thank you so much for stopping by. Been a fan for a long long time and love the show man.

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You can hear this and many other great Ron Bennington Interviews in their entirety on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Don’t have a subscription yet?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

 For more information on Shameless, check out their home page or follow them on twitter @SHO_Shameless.  Season two begins Sunday January 8, 2012 at 9pm on Showtime.