Talking TV on DVD with /Dead Like Me's/ Ellen Muth

As I was listening to the group commentary on the Season 1 pilot, it seemed like the cast had a genuine camaraderie. We had a lot of fun. Yet we're all such different people - and we're not in the same age category either. Laura [Harris, who plays Daisy], Callum [Blue, who plays Mason], and I [playing Georgia "George" Lass] are pretty close in age, but we all grew up in different types of families and different environments. Laura grew up here in BC [British Columbia, where the show was filmed], Callum grew up in England, and I grew up in Connecticut. And you know, Mandy [Patinkin, who plays Rube] is older than all of us. And Jasmine [Guy, who plays Roxy] grew up in Los Angeles and the film business.

Jasmine essentially says the same thing: Really, under what other circumstances would these people even come together? Right. We're a love/hate family.

True - you're not quite the Brady Bunch... No, we are a family - but we're the type of characters who'd never admit that they love each other, even though there's a lot of love there.

STAYING IN CHARACTER Are you a fan of DVD commentaries in general? Yeah. I always find it interesting to watch actors explain what it meant to them to film a particular scene. And I like to see if they stay in character between takes or return to their "original" selves. I tended to stay inside my character's head a lot to maintain my focus. In the Waffle Haus scenes [where the Reapers meet daily to get their "assignments"], I didn't have to - but during the more emotional scenes, I kept a Walkman on to distance myself from the rest of the world so I could stay in that moment.

Is that hard to do? You had to restrain your emotions a lot in Season 1. Do you have to somehow release that when you're done shooting? A lot of times I do, actually, because it becomes so emotionally exhausting. I have to somehow let it all out.

You see it a lot in George's eyes. And in her voiceovers, you hear what she learns and what she was feeling. I spent a lot of time in my trailer thinking about what was going on in my head. I learned how to "de-focus" so I could go back to being Ellen at the end of the day. A lot of actors have trouble separating themselves from their characters, and that becomes dangerous.

Do you find yourself sometimes "pulling a George" when you're talking to real people? Does that just happen naturally? Once in a while it does, when I add her deadpan sarcasm to my regular conversational style. But for the most part, I'm not as angry as George is [laughs], and I'm not as resentful and spiteful as she is. I have respect for authority, where George doesn't - although she learns to have more respect for authority in Season 2. In Season 1, she's very rebellious. In Season 2, she finally comes to terms with the fact that being a Grim Reaper is her job, and it's what she has to do.

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