At Monday’s Emmy Performers Peer Group party at the Montage Beverly Hills, the nominees thought long and hard about which TV shows they’d like to grace as a guest star. But “Veep’s” Tony Hale didn’t hesitate with his bid for a role on IFC’s “Portlandia.”
“Hands down, Portlandia,” he remarked. “Definitely. It puts a mirror up to society and just allows people to laugh at it. It kind of wakes us up to the ridiculousness of life and I just think it’s brilliant.”
Hale’s own show was the pick of “Scandal’s” Dan Bucatinsky. “Not to go onto another political show but the show is so funny — it had such a great year. I think it would be really fun!”
Coming off a successful first television run on “Fargo,” Billy Bob Thornton entertained the idea of a part very different from the miniseries’ Lorne Malvo. The actor loves “The Big Bang Theory” after his mother turned him onto the show, and decided that he’d “want to be a guy who steals Penny away.” But if that doesn’t work out he’s hoping for a role as Hodor’s cousin on “Game of Thrones.”
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“Scandal’s” current big bad Joe Morton also commented that he once had his eyes on CBS’ “Person of Interest,” but can’t see himself getting into television comedy. However, the actor recently finished a workshop of a play about comedian Dick Gregory, where he gets to perform some of the comic’s stand-up.
Morton paused to greet friend and fellow nominee Kevin Spacey on the carpet, and joked about what might happen should their two power-hungry characters ever shared screen time. “That would be interesting,” he mused. “Any number of things would happen. I’m sure it would depend on what we wanted and if we wanted the same things — and we probably wouldn’t.”
Who would win in a fight, Rowan Pope or Frank Underwood? “Oh, me of course!” Morton laughed.
Double nominee Allison Janney also gave some thought to how her two very different characters (Bonnie on “Mom” and Margaret Scully on “Masters of Sex”) might react to each other.
“Margaret would not know what to say. I think Bonnie would probably ask her a lot of inappropriate questions that would make Margaret squirm and Margaret would maybe start to have a slight panic ,” she said. “But I think if they had to take a road trip together they might actually find something that they liked about each other.”
