Bundyology - An Interview with Ed O'Neill

Loaded (Magazine):
Interview with Ed O'Neill

Last update February 4, 1998

Back to «Articles and Interviews»

As posted by StuartM at alt.tv.mwc on February 3, 1998.

From LOADED

Issue 39 (July 1997)

DO YOU THINK ONE OF THE REASONS THE SHOW WAS SO SUCCESSFUL WAS THAT THE FAMILY ARE QUITE TRUE TO LIFE?
Yeah, I mean we certainly did show the flaws, especially in matters of the sexual situation within a marriage, how it can be boring and so forth. I don't feel any of the other shows feel too comfortable with dealing with that issue. Just to show the dark side of human nature - most sitcoms don't do that often.

DO YOU KNOW ANYBODY LIKE AL?
Yes, my uncle. That's what I've kind of based it on. He reminds me of this guy, self deprecating, real ironic sense of humour, dark, pessimistic, you know. Actually, I told him, but I don't think he was interested in it, to tell you the truth, but he got a big kick out of it when I told him.

APART FROM WHEN THEY WANT MONEY FROM AL, CAN YOU EVER THINK OF A TIME WHEN THERE'S BEEN ACTUAL AFFECTION BETWEEN THE CAST MEMBERS?
Oh yeah, more so unfortunately in the past than in the last year or so, but yeah, we've had that, you know, father-son stuff and daughter-son and daughter-father daughter-mother stuff. We've banded together and beat up other families.

HAD YOU DONE COMEDY BEFORE THIS?
Only on stage.

WHAT OTHER COMEDIES DO YOU LIKE?
Today I don't watch too many, but I like the little bit I've seen of "Seinfeld"... I like Garry Shandling's show ["The Larry Sanders Show"] very much. I think that's probably my favourite - in fact it's my favourite. But they can get away with murder, they're on HBO, and can say whatever they want. The can say "Fuck!" they can say anything. So it's really funny. But when I was growing up I liked "The Honeymooners" and Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Laurel and Hardy. I love Peter Sellers. And I often thought that some of the old British stage lions, Ralph Richardson, John Gielgud, even Alan Bates, Olivier, were very funny. When they did do comedy, they did it very well and I always got a big kick out of it.

WHEN DID YOU REALISE YOU WERE FUNNY?
I don't know.

WHAT ABOUT THE FACES YOU DO AS AL, DID THEY JUST COME?
I never did any of them in my other work, that I was aware of. Maybe I did or I didn't, but I don't think so. So I wasn't aware of it, but in this show, I don't know, it just seemed to fit in some way.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE AL WOULDN'T GO WITHOUT, APART FROM A TV?
Oh, beer, I don't know... bowling.

THERE ARE A LOT OF SIMILARITIES BETWEEN AL AND HOMER.
Yes, except we came before Homer Simpson. Homer actually started on "The Tracey Ullman Show". Al was sort of really a combination between the two writers that created him, and then with myself, so it was really kinda this - what is someone with split personalities... schizophrenic - it's a bit hard to schizophrenic because it's me and Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye, all combined in one character. Don't you think?

IS THE SHOW GOING TO RUN FOR QUITE A WHILE YET?
Oh we don't know. We're in fact waiting right now to hear if we're going to go another year or not, everyone's a bit tense. We'd like to go one more and finish up in a proper way. We wanna do a last one-hour episode, and get Leavitt and Moye back to write it, who are our creators. They've agreed to come back and write the last show.

HOW DO YOU THINK THE LAST SHOW WOULD GO?
I don't know. I had one thought, that was like at the end of the programme he wins the lotto for $84 million and as they celebrate a tornado comes down and takes the house away and leaves a big hole in the ground. Well it's almost like "Doctor Strangelove". He got out of the wheelchair and the world blew up. I like that ending very much hah hah hah. Go off in a tornado.

HOW DO YOU KNOW PETER SELLER'S WORK? WAS IT THROUGH THE MOVIES?
"Doctor Strangelove", "After the Fox" - that's one of my favourites of his. Everyone raves about his movie "Being There", but I can't watch Peter Sellers not be funny. And when I saw him in it, I did not enjoy it as much as I would have. I thought he was brilliant in it, but he was so funny in all of the "Pink Panther" things. There are a few others, and he was so so funny. He was really a genius, but also a sad man unfortunately, disturbed, but oh so funny. This movie in town now, "Waiting for Guzman", is very funny. You might like it, it's the guys who did "Spinal Tap" which is one of my favourite movies. It's about a local community theatre in the Midwest run by a guy named Corky Sinclair who's gay, but in the mid-west, they just think he's artistic.

IS THERE ANYTHING OF YOURSELF IN AL?
I don't know, yeah, I suppose in some ways. You'd have to be a bit like him to play him. Everybody has their own character, and it's funny because everyone says they're not anything like them and everybody on the show is a lot like them. So I must be.

DO YOU EVER FEEL THAT AL WILL CHANGE HIS CHARACTER?
No, and that's the key. He never does, only the situations around him. He's always the same, and it's hard because that's part of my big problem in the last couple of years, trying to make him stay the same. A lot of the writers who are new are trying to make him grow or stretch him or whatever. But I always say, "No, no, I don't want that. I just want Al to be Al." That's why it's funny. It's like anything else. It's like we've all said so many times about our own fathers. The guy will never change, and that's sort of what we're after with this, all the time.

WHAT WOULD AL DO IF HE WAS PRESIDENT?
Oh, I don't know. Al would probably give himself a raise. Hah hah. I don't think I would feel too secure with Al as President of the United States.

WHAT DOES THE DOG SPEND THE MONEY AL GIVES HIM IN THE CREDITS ON?
I have no idea. The thing just came about with the fact that Al spends money on everybody including the dog, that everything cost him money. We had to put meat on the bills, so the dog would take them from my hand.

Back to the top of this page

Back to «Articles and Interviews»