PASADENA, Calif. _ Jemaine Clement can't make up his mind. The New Zealand actor-writer is best known here as one of the hilarious cogs in the comedy series "Flight of the Conchords."
While he and co-creator Bret McKenzie starred in the show, Clement is torn, he says.
"When I'm writing I always want to be acting and when I'm acting I always want to be writing."
The conflict arises from Clement's own personality. Half-timid mouse and half-loquacious lion, he admits he's shy deep down. "If I say that I'm shy, my friends find that ridiculous," he says.
"They say, 'You're one of the least shy people I've ever met!' But it's how you perceive yourself," he says, adding, "I guess I'm confident in some ways. It doesn't bother me to get in front of hundreds of people unless I don't know what to say, unless I haven't thought of what I'm going to say.
"I love to write for a while," he laughs. "Acting's way more fun, but there's something satisfying (about) creating characters and when you see them walking around and they improvise and they've got enough from the script to become a person. I still like that."
And that is what he's doing now. He's penning his new comedy series, "What We Do in the Shadows," premiering on FX March 27. It's the tale of three frustrated vampires living in the nether depths of Staten Island and coping with their misfit problems.
Clement saw himself a misfit growing up. "I was pretty quiet, wasn't very good at sports," he recalls. "I remember once having to represent the school in running. That was my worst nightmare. And New Zealand is very sports-oriented. In America people like to watch it, but in New Zealand they play it. Everyone plays a sport, yeah. And I didn't enjoy that," says Clement.
"What I didn't like about sports mainly, ironically, was working with a group. I didn't like that you all had to do the same thing. I really hated that. I see the same in my son. Now I have to work with 100 people on the same thing, but I enjoy it now. But I didn't like what the nerdy kids were supposed to do. I didn't like Dungeons & Dragons or anything like that."
Always an outlier, he observes, "Individualism is encouraged in America. All the books you see in the airport are self-help books, how to succeed. And New Zealand is not like that. It's more like blending in. I didn't want to blend in."
His mom, who worked in a cheese factory and raised him, was on to him early. "My mum always used to say to me, she said two things: 'You always want to stand out. And you always want to be like everyone else.' And they were both true."
Clement, 45, landed his first job at 11 as a pin-setter in a bowling alley. He also worked for an uncle assembling computers, was a door-to-door salesman pitching orange juice while in college and began writing commercials for radio stations while still in school.
He met co-writers Taika Waititi and Bret McKenzie at university (though Clement never finished). Fresh out of school, the three of them tried to land some kind of work in show business.
"We all put in pictures for shows, but we could never get through," he says. "We'd do theater, but you have to do it a lot to live off. You've got to put on a lot of shows and people have got to come."
At this point, he considered quitting. "Eventually I was thinking of doing advertising. I was writing for advertising. Then it just all suddenly took off all at once. Bret and I got a live show in America, a special. At the same time, Taika was nominated for an Oscar (for his two short films), and it all happened within a week! We'd all been totally poor _ all of a sudden from trying to scrounge for money, suddenly people wanted us to make stuff."
They've been "making stuff" ever since. In fact, Clement is concurrently writing two shows, one in New Zealand and "What We Do in the Shadows" in the U.S.
He's been married to actress Miranda Manasiadis for 11 years, and they have a 10-year-old son.
Boredom helps feed his creative impulses, he thinks. "Have a walk, have a bath, and get bored," he says. "I always think I want a big holiday, that I want a vacation, and two weeks into the vacation, I start emailing people: 'Let's try and make something.'"
MARCIA CLARK RETRIES TV
Marcia Clark was the prosecuting attorney on the O.J. Simpson trial. She lost. Losing that case depressed her, she says. But she's risen from the ashes with a new career as a TV executive producer. Her latest project is "The Fix," airing on ABC.
It's about an attorney who fails to convict an alleged killer and retires, only to return eight years later when he commits another crime. As for Clark, she says losing the O.J. case "was like staring into the face of the divide in this country, staring into the face of manipulations that had nothing to do with the evidence that were brought into a courtroom and should never have been allowed to be. It's watching justice being thwarted on a daily basis," she says.
"And justice was something with a mission to me, and a very important one. I was a defense attorney before I was a prosecutor. I have defended cases since then. I have taken indigent appeal cases. And justice is incredibly important to me, and watching justice get thwarted ... it was very painful."
ARQUETTE SHINES IN HULU DRAMA
Patricia Arquette, who was so brilliant as the prison employee who helps two convicts escape in Showtime's "Escape at Dannemora," is back as another twisted character.
This time she's starring in Hulu's drama "The Act," premiering Wednesday. Arquette plays a mother who suffers from Munchausen by proxy syndrome. Those with the syndrome inflict all kinds of physical ailments on their children in neurotic attempts to gain attention for themselves.
"I think in general the choices that people and characters make, they do because they have a reason to do it," says Arquette. "And they create a logic that makes sense for them. Whether people think they're good people or bad people, or their choices are good choices or bad choices, they have a whole story supporting the reason they make the choice."
The show is based on a true story. "In the writers' room we spoke to experts in Munchausen syndrome, and they told us really chilling stories," reports writer Nick Antosca. "And they told us about how it's a compulsion, and the women who suffer from it, and men, they get something out of it psychologically. And they can't stop. And we were curious about what that experience is like ... And it's also interesting because it's a love story. It's a story about love that is so extreme it becomes toxic. And that's really fascinating too."
'KNIGHTFALL' STAR FOLLOWED TWISTED PATH
The gloriously historic "Knightfall" returns to the History Channel next Monday. The series stars Tom Cullen as the gallant leader of the Knights Templar in their attempts to prevail against the persecution by King Philip IV of France in the early 1300s.
Cullen says it took him a long and twisted road to reach this point in his life. "I think I always wanted to be an actor, but I went through a real journey with it," he says.
"I wasn't very strong in my volition when it came to becoming an actor. When I was 22 that was the time I was like, 'This is it, I'm going to go for it.'
"I went to school that didn't necessarily support or nurture that kind of need and want to become an artist. And so I grew up in an environment of negativity. So it took me a while to break down the door of people saying, 'This is not possible.'
"Both of my parents are writers and the environment I grew up in was one of 'No!' And it took me a while to say 'yes' to myself. I think that I really wanted to become an actor. It was something that I felt very passionate about, and I really loved and believe in it. I think pursuing something you love is often the most terrifying thing because if I went for it and I failed, the pain would be too much. So what I did, I put it off for a very long time until it became unbearable. And then I went for it."
