Assignment X has a new interview with Garret. It’s mostly about Raising Hope, but he also talks about The Road and Winter’s Bone. Hit the link for the whole article, here’s a snippet:
ASSIGNMENT X: You’ve played a lot of rather tough, scary people lately. Do you have a different process for playing someone like Burt Chance on RAISING HOPE?
GARRET DILLAHUNT: I don’t know if my process is any different. I’m the same actor. I like to try to do the opposite of what I did last time. A lot of the folks in this show come from the theatre, Martha [Plimpton] ( does and Lucas was a theatre guy in Chicago, that’s where they found him. In that kind of world, you’re really used to playing different characters almost every job. You’re the prince in one and the pauper in the next. I think it really helps the creativity on the show, certainly in my choices, to try to do something different than I did last time. I think what [creator/show runner] Greg Garcia enjoyed and we did too was, it’s a real ensemble, and there’s a real environment we’ve created on set where we all felt that we could be creative and a little loose with our characters, so in a lot of the frames, it’s real deep. You’ll see stuff going on all the way to the back, which I really like. I like physical comedy, I like kind of low humor, I have a weakness for it. I like the physical nature of the comedy in this.
AX: Do you underplay at all in scenes with Cloris Leachman, as her performance is kind of large?
DILLAHUNT: You’re not going to want to get into that contest. I’m glad she likes me and I like her, too. Every day, she just comes and cracks up – she just points to my face and cracks up, and I don’t know what’s funny, but she thinks it’s funny. There is a lot of room for subtlety in the acting, oddly, so yes, that’s my instinct anyway, to always sort of play under, sometimes to my detriment, but I think that’s why it’s funnier to me.
There are a bunch of behind-the-scenes pics from “Cheaters” on the Raising Hope FB page.
And Fox has released the complete May schedule, which includes the synopses for the last three episodes of Raising Hope.
Episode 1×19, “Sleep Training,” airs next week (April 26) at 9:30. The May episodes are 1×20, “Everybody Flirts… Sometimes,” 1×21, “Baby Monitor,” and 1×22, “Don’t Vote for This Episode.”
Tuesday, May 3
RAISING HOPE (9:01-9:31 PM ET/PT) – “Everybody Flirts… Sometimes”
When Burt’s (Garret Dillahunt) flirtatious ways are exposed, the entire family begins to experiment with flirting. Jimmy (Lucas Neff) and Sabrina (Shannon Woodward) compete to be Barney’s (guest star Gregg Binkley) favorite employee, Maw Maw (guest star Cloris Leachman) gives away her treasures and Virginia (Martha Plimpton) is stalked by a coffee shop employee.Tuesday, May 10
RAISING HOPE (9:01-9:31 PM ET/PT) – “Baby Monitor”
When Hope’s baby monitor picks up their neighbors’ conversations, Burt and Virginia go out of their way to meet the troubled couple (guest stars Jaime Pressly and Ethan Suplee) and try to help their marriage. Meanwhile, Howdy’s Market has the entire community, including baby Hope and Maw Maw, involved in a commercial competition with a rival store.Tuesday, May 17
RAISING HOPE (9:01-9:31 PM ET/PT) – “Don’t Vote for This Episode” – Season Finale
The Chances reminisce about the year Jimmy turned 18 – when Maw Maw kicked them out of the house, when a goth Jimmy (a/k/a “Drakkar Noir”) took up residence in the grocery store and when Burt and Virginia finally figured out how to be adults.
