TNT's "Perception": On Set with Eric McCormack & Rachael Leigh Cook

I'm Oliver Trivino here on the set of Perception with this hat on, Eric McCormack. Hello.

Are they shooting? Yeah, they're shooting down there. This is all a studio in Solar, California. This is like 20 minutes from from Hollywood. That's actually 1-1-0-0. No. Come visit us anytime. My favorite thing, I mean a lot of actors love shooting on location. There's a thrill to that. Right. But there's something exciting about having your crew that you know and your sets that you know and knowing that it's pretend, but it's lit so beautifully that it's, you know, you believe it. Right. So, welcome to the set of Perception. Um this is probably the the most, the biggest and most permanent part of the set that we've had since uh the beginning, which is my house, Pierce's house. So, they decided early on Pierce plays piano, which I do a little bit but not nearly as well as him. And there's no word, there's no pedals. It's a complete fake. Um can we still get a little bit? See? Nothing. Okay. Nothing. The director's always like, "Going to be in your hands for like 15 seconds." That's a lot of time. So, when you see me playing, I'm not really playing, but I'm kind of playing. Pierce has a um a a very old sense of style. He likes he likes things the way they are and doesn't like things to change, so. Right. That that's an understatement, yeah. He likes to you're paranoid schizophrenic, I mean. Yeah, his his approach to life and to a crime scene and is is particularly unique. Right. This is the door that I I've I've started to do like Kramer entrances because apparently we don't like to do a lot of phone calls. So Pierce is always just showing up. People that involves clearly a cab ride across town. Okay. Come in. It wasn't the monkey. It was the whale. Well, where's the monkey? No, it's that's the outbreak. It's just I want to do is come and say one line. It wasn't the monkey. It was the whale. And I'm always out of breath because I'm running across town.

We love that it's not always just here's the crime of the week and we solve it. Right. That that there is an ongoing conflict and we get to see, particularly with Pierce, we get to see through his hallucinations. Right. How he thinks.

How would you say Kate has uh has grown or changed over these last three seasons? Because it's a long time.

She's reunited uh successfully with her ex this time. She's gotten over some of her trust issues with them. Right. And they but they were there for a reason. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's it's been fun to have like a personal Right. angle storyline. And I love it. Rather than crime, crime, crime. Right. Or crime, crime, crime, romance, crime. Right. You've got to throw a little bit of romance in there. Yeah.

So, this with the wall gone,

Uh-huh.

is Pierce's office. Right.

I love this office. That's this is great. Beautiful. This is beautiful.

We've had this from the beginning. And then this, my favorite, the lecture hall. Where Pierce does his lectures at the beginning and end of every episode. We often shoot four at once because we shoot two episodes at the same time. Oh, wow. So there in my head, nothing else is in my head. The moment they're gone, it's like for sure. Yeah. Never to be thought of again.

And you directed it as well. You directed it.

I directed the second episode, which is my first time uh directing a show. I love shooting in the kitchen. I love I love refrigerator scenes, like in the episode that I directed. I said, "I'm going to make a sandwich in this scene." They said, "Why?" I said, "Why not?" People do that. It's a thing that a person would do. And it's real. I had it staged just so that when I finally had it made and I went to bite, Natalie said something that made me stop. I will never eat the sandwich. That sandwich is amazing.

I want to be in your team and she writes. Because that was I would have guessed a flavor that you would have said exactly. You'd have got turkey. That's brilliant.

Turkey, definitely.

You'd have got turkey. You would have got turkey. You'd have got turkey.

It's so talented. Thank you. It's, I mean, it's a lot of pressure only because you you don't want to screw up. But it it the pressure was relieved because I know this this group of people. Right. I mean, I'm not a big mouth anyway, so I'm always saying what I think we should do. So it was nice to actually have legitimacy and no one could actually say that we can't do that. Nice. That's great. So this is this is our biggest and uh probably the set we use the most, is the FBI where where Kate works. Which is extremely awesome and fluid and uh and real. It's very real. Last year, I don't know why I'm remembering this, but I turned 50. And uh that the crew had a big party for my for for the day and they my my face appeared. As you can see here, my face appeared everywhere. And and it's to this day it's on boxes. It was

Great. Your place was a lot more modern than Eric's.

Quite a bit more. Yeah. Especially the TV. Pierce is up to the latest, I mean, he knows everything about neuroscience. He's the latest the cutting edge of science. But his television is from 1972.

Oh, yeah, that's not going to work.

Yeah, he's stuck in the dark ages, clearly showing his age there. Just kidding. Just kidding. And this this is probably where we spend more time than anything. Come come over here. This is it's an interrogation room. So, you can only make it so interesting. And but this is where often the the confession happens, which is three pages long. Here's how it usually works. Let's let's do it the Piercey way. Marret is across from you. She's interrogating, right? Cops now. And then all of a sudden, I mean, I'm in that room and a hallucination occurs to me and I burst through the door. Right in the middle of the thing and I'll go, "You said it was a monkey, but it wasn't a monkey. In fact, it was a whale. Wasn't it?" It was a whale. And then you start to cry and you start to tell stories that we flashback to. The whale. I didn't do what you say though. I would never do that. I hugged it. I hugged the whale. I didn't do anything more. And then Marret would have a moment where the camera would push in. I was going, "You never saw it. How did you?" And then she'll look at me like, "How did you figure that out?" You know? Look back by hallucination through the thing. It's This is smart. There's a pattern, but it's um it's a fun pattern.

This is a pattern. I can't believe we've made it this far. I mean, no, I I can.

You can, of course. You knew it. I mean, I feel very lucky to be able to do this. I think at the time you said to me the show was that amazing. It was going to go at least five seasons. Uh probably five to 12 seasons. There you go. Season three though. Yeah, that's season three. Our season premiere is uh the most exciting we shot in Paris. Jim Burrows who used to direct all of uh Will & Grace used to tell the writers, you know, just paint yourself into a corner. See and end every season with something you have no idea how you're going to start the next season. And that's what we did. So I said to Ken who created the show, I said, "What what now what are we doing?" And he said, "We should do an episode in Paris." Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's a lot of green screen and he said, "No, no, let's go to Paris." Somehow, I don't know how we figured it out, but we did. Right. We had to solve a crime in France and it was it was awesome. It was five days of running around outside in front of the Louvre, in front of the Notre Dame. It was it was great. So often you're on location and it's hard to but have everybody in one building to be able to run upstairs and make changes to anything and have everybody we read through the next script. Everything's everything's in one place. The trouble is that excuse of my navigation took me to the wrong place doesn't work after the first two visits. No. No one do. So, this is it. That's incredible what set designers do nowadays. Shout out to them, yeah. Impressive stuff.

Eric, thank you, mate. Absolute pleasure. Yes. Thank you all. This time is amazing. Looking so good and so young. I'll be stealing his moisturizer after this.