Have you ever wondered what it is like to work on a TV show? Donal Logue has been on a ton of diverse programs, including Terriers, Grounded For Life, Vikings and Copper. Obviously, the man has no beef with working on television, but if you are guessing working on the small screen is a cake walk, guess again. Logue recently spoke out about working on Fox’s hit new series Gotham and he says the hours are “grinding.”
As TV has grown increasingly stylized, the medium has moved further away from quick turnarounds and super cheap productions, and the hours haven’t slowed down either. According to Logue, now that it is TV season, he is on a crazy schedule. It is not unusual for the show to film more than one or two takes, and he says it leads to pretty lengthy and crazy work weeks. Here’s the full story.
“But you know, you work crazy hours. I think Friday night was a 16.5-17 hour day—that’s every day. The craziest thing is doing this stuff on the weekends and not to be a d-i-c-k, you know but you’ll pull 80 or 100 hours. When I was doing Law and Order at the same time, I was pulling 110 hour weeks and then they want you to do these things on the weekend and you’re fried.”
It may sound a little bit like Logue is complaining, but in the roundtable interview filmed by Collider, Logue is quick to turn the complaint around, noting that the cast and crew work really hard to make Gotham “look like a film,” and try to come to the set prepared so they don’t have to work even harder every day.
“The hours are pretty grinding. Great crew. So, I think we are all pretty prepared, too. There’s a good culture on the set of showing up prepared. You know, you can move more quickly if we show up and have our work done. We do the work away from work so that when we show up to work [it goes smoothly].”
Logue goes on to mention how he’s seen people in the past with “5-page scripts” who don’t show up prepared for the day, but he’s not naming any names, and in any case, it seems like Gotham is the type of set where you show up ready and rearing to go, work hard and are rewarded with a pretty solid final product. Logue’s Harvey Bullock has been a standout in the cast, but he’s not the only one, competing with a few young cast members as well as incredible performances from the various villains on the series. The moral of this story is that hard work pays off. Gotham has already been given a full season order by Fox, and I wouldn’t be shocked to hear a second season is on the way.
We’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, you can catch new episodes of Gotham on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. ET.
