There are a huge amount of people who sell a TV pilot every year, but most of them never get produced. It’s very easy to make a living and never get anything produced.
I’ve always lived in New York; I never moved to L.A. I was developing and producing and writing a pilot for a year. That took me out of everything for over a year. When that sadly didn’t go forward, I shot ‘Black Mirror’ right after that.
I’d never properly done pilot season in America. I did it for just a couple of weeks, a couple of years ago. Usually, you get pilot scripts and the initial script quality isn’t there.
My take on ‘Lucifer’ was pretty much laid down by Tom Kapinos when he wrote the original pilot script for it. I remember reading it for the first time, and I was about four or five pages in, thinking this is so funny, and I know how I would want to do this if I was going to do it.
I’m going to write a whole pilot and see if anyone’s interested, and if not then I’ll just live out the tortured life instead of showing it on TV.
I read, studied, and learned everything I could find about aviation. It was my greatest desire to become a pilot. I could already picture myself in the cockpit of an airliner or in a military fighter plane. I felt deep in my heart this was my thing!
The only thing that I’m not willing to do is really stupid, horribly written sitcoms. It can be tempting during pilot season time, but I realized this a while ago when I almost signed my life away to a stupid pilot.
I’ve spent my life as an airplane mechanic, pilot, aircraft manufacturer and airline CEO who never lost a life or an airplane. I am considerate of the risk we take every time we fly. I also know we need to fly and always to improve safety.
When I first did a U.S. pilot season, there were very few British actors schlepping around town trying to get into television. That was 1999.
To be a bodyguard is to be a kamikaze pilot. Dedicated.
We went down for pilot season, I got Full House, and we wound up never leaving.
‘Bhuj’ has a strong ensemble and I play a Sikh fighter pilot in it.
The pilot is the wedding, and the series is the relationship.
As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut, then a fighter pilot, and then later, as I grew up, I was focused on scoring high marks so that I could do an MBA in marketing.
Children often ask me, they say, ‘Well, how do you become a fighter pilot, or how do you become an astronaut, or…?’ And I say, ‘Love what you’re doing and do it very well.’
I didn’t get my first pilot that I screen-tested for, and I really thought it was the end of the world. But it’s fine, you know, you move on to something else.
I am most grateful for having bad eyesight, which prevented me from becoming a commercial pilot and instead, led me to having the best job in the world – representing the people of California’s 47th Congressional District.
You learn to know a pilot in a storm.
I never dreamed to be a fighter pilot, because those guys are jerks.
So many actors started on soap operas. So yeah, I’d graduated Julliard and done some theater. I’ve done a few guest spots on TV but nothing that long-term. I did a little ‘E.R.’ back when it was on, and a pilot for ‘Cold Case.’
I wasn’t the first choice for the role of Danny Tanner. Betty White was. Not true, but there was another actor whom they had shot the pilot with.
‘The X-Files’ from the beginning was a very visual show, and with Bob Mandel directing the pilot and Dan Sackheim being involved in the production of the pilot and directing the first episode, they brought a visual style to it that was elaborated on by so many good directors.
I remember on the pilot of ‘Will and Grace’ some executives from NBC saying to me, ‘There are too many gay jokes.’ I said, ‘If not on this show, then what show?’
One thing every Army pilot knows is that there is no such thing as a routine mission.
I think the core of Jaime Lannister is actually that final line in the pilot when he says, ‘The things I do for love.’ He might do horrible things – and they are truly, some of them, horrific. There’s no excuses. But he does it out of what he sees as a necessity, out of love.
A pilot is like the most extensive dress rehearsal you can ever imagine, because the writers are learning about the actors, the actors are learning about the characters.
What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys.
I would have become a pilot if it wasn’t for my poor eyesight and the fact that I am hopeless in science.
The pilot system in television is utterly broken. It’s a huge waste of money.
I wasn’t a Pan Am pilot or any other kind of pilot.
When a network passes, you really mourn the show. The official state of grief in Hollywood is saying you’re taking around a dead pilot.
The stuff I did in ‘Rescue Me’ was great. It gave me the opportunity to play comedy, and Denis Leary was the first one to take a chance with me. And from that experience, we had a comedy pilot that we did that I was going to play the lead in. And then ‘Person of Interest’ came along. They’re all new experiences.
There were a lot of things I thought of doing as I was growing up, from becoming a singer to a priest to a pilot.
When I went in for ‘The Good Doctor,’ I had just been released from ‘Berlin Station.’ And when I got the initial role for the ‘Good Doctor’ pilot, her name was Allegra Abe. That was the script.
I was in the pilot of ER: I played a 15-year-old pregnant girl they were treating. And then, in the final season, they were casting for interns.
I always told my children that if they want to be pilot, go ahead and do it, or if they wanted to get into agriculture, I told them that I will support them. But when they chose music, you feel as if those birds have come back home to the nest.
My parents always said that I would be a lawyer or pilot or doctor – and I always just thought that’s what I would do.
I don’t know how much credit I can take for ‘Walker, Texas Ranger,’ because I only worked on it for three weeks. I re-wrote the pilot, and then my name was on it forever.
If I had the uniform on, you didn’t doubt for a moment I was a pilot. No one ever blinked an eye if I tried to cash a cheque wearing that uniform.
Pilots are useful. You just learn things during a pilot – the piece of casting that just wasn’t right or things about the storytelling nature.
Normally, you cast a pilot, and you have to make compromises about being political about who you cast.
Being in a male-dominated career field as a combat pilot, I got used to kind of blocking out the lies in the attacks that people would levy against me and trying to tell me who I am and define who I am when I know what I’m fighting for.
I experienced a lot of discrimination in the military. One commander told me that if my time of the month got in the way of my job, he would fire me. An instructor in pilot training continually failed me for subjective things, like judgment and situational awareness–I couldn’t get him to tell me what I was doing wrong.
I could have just invited a bunch of my pilot buddies to go, and we would have had a great time and come back and had a bunch of cocktails. Instead, we wanted to bring in everyday people and energize everyone else around the idea of opening up spaceflight to more and more of us.
I had done another show called ‘United States of Cars,’ which was a pilot that didn’t get picked up. And they said, ‘You know, we’re doing ‘Top Gear,’ and would you like to meet the guys?’ It was the wild – most wild audition I ever had because I never went to a studio or a producer’s office.
I was 14 or 15 when I moved to L.A. permanently, but I had been out for pilot season for a few years before that.
I got canceled in the middle of making the pilot.
Astronauts working for the government will always need to be either pilots or mission specialists. Those who want to be pilots should have military experience – ideally, a test pilot background.
I got this letter asking me if I wanted to or if I would consider going to experimental test pilot school and becoming the first Negro astronaut and I thought it was crazy.
I’ve not been distracted by a long-running TV show or visits to America for pilot season.
As a child, I always wanted to be a race car pilot.
I am a helicopter pilot. Something that gives me pleasure sometimes is taking my helicopter to go high, 2000 meter, 6000 feet, to go there and feel like a bird. In this moment I feel free.
So, I’m happy to do that because it’s a wonderful working relationship but I will be going out for pilot season for half hour work and that’s the gamble I’m taking.
Before I became a fighter pilot, everyone said that women didn’t have the physical strength. Well, I had just completed the Hawaii Ironman Triathlon.
It’s better to write a pilot rather than write a spec show. In some cases, you have to do both, but more often, writing a pilot and having an original voice is more important.
I saw the pilot for ‘Girls’ about six months before it aired.
I was influenced by many, many different people in my student years, and I was always, I guess, immersed in a Navy environment, and so, obviously, that had a big impact when I decided what I wanted to do was go and be a Navy pilot. I was very familiar with the Navy community and felt very comfortable with it.
