There’s nothing “actorly” about Madeline Wise’s film and TV performances, despite her extensive theatrical training and stage-smart knowhow. In fact, this talented, creative thespian is so natural onscreen in shows such as HBO’s Crashing (2017-present)—for which she most recently did a six-episode arc—and web series such as the Adam Goldman-written-and-directed Whatever This Is. (2013) that one may forget the fact that Wise, as she puts it, is still “learning” about the discipline’s nuances. One cannot, however, forget the breadth of her credentials, which range from helping to run her own theater collective and starring in Milo Cramer’s comic play Cute Activist at Brooklyn, N.Y.’s own The Bushwick Starr, to appearing in the series The Outs (2012-present) and Peacekeepers (2014-2016), along with a host of short films. Graciously, Wise took the time to answer CURNBLOG’s questions about her career, acting techniques and challenges, and the results are pretty darn fascinating. If you’re interested in winking dogs, conquering stage fright and being generous when it comes to both drama and comedy, check this interview out. Just don’t forget the “Trump Selftapes” … they may provide lessons you will never forget.

SB: You’ve co-founded your own theater company, the New Saloon Theatre Collective, and have a strong foundation in the performing arts, with training at institutions ranging from The Actors Center in New York to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in the United Kingdom. Can you tell us what techniques you bring from the stage to the screen, including to Crashing, and how they affect your work?

MW: One of my favorite things about acting on stage is that energetically, the audience really changes the room. There are nights when they’re with you and laughing, and there are nights when they’re with you but listening silently, and there are nights when they’re not with you at all. You figure out what kind of house it is in real time over the course of the night. I’m not sure audiences know how much we’re paying attention to them; I suspect they think we’re not? I don’t know. (And also maybe other actors don’t feel this way.) Regardless: I’m listening to the audience in the same way I’m listening to my fellow actors. On film, that goes away, so I feel like I just listen to the other actors twice as much.

An alumna of shows such as Whatever This Is., as well as short films such as Alice (2016), you have the ability to pack a lot of character into a tightly written, brief onscreen format. How do you condense such content into the parts you play, and are there any strategies you use to edit your own performances … with regard to movements, reactions and the like?

I like to remember that what you see onscreen is only a small fraction of what happens to (and what will happen to or what has already happened to) the character—there’s a lot of other life that we never see. You’ve got to remember that you’re playing a person who continues to exist when there’s no camera around. I think if you remember to do that, the small bits you do see onscreen feel so much richer, because they’re informed by the rest of that life.

The strategy that I use to get to that, I guess, is that I try to pull the character as close as I can to myself or to one part of myself. I’m a whole person, so if the character becomes some version of me, the character becomes a whole person.

Which is scarier: Acting before an audience in a play for one night and trying to perfect your role … or doing multiple takes in a TV show or film where you have to find the right emotions, inflections and responses?

Every time I do a play, I spend the final half hour before places are called staring at myself in the dressing room mirror while saying “I hate this, why do I do this, I hate this, I’m terrified, I hate this, I’m never going to do this again.” I get awful stage fright. But then the play starts, and it goes away. Filming feels less scary, though I will say that inevitably, once shooting is done, I get 10 million good ideas for how to do a scene, and I panic that everything I did do was bad. I guess I just love to be anxious. But in the moment, the live audience is scarier.

On Crashing, your character, Kat, is a brilliant, quirky individual who “meets cute” in a clothing shop with Pete Holmes’ awkward but starting-to-be successful comedian, works as an actuary, introduces her new beau to the joys of spontaneity and remains loyal to him despite his religious mother’s overbearing behavior and his own oft-frustrating idiosyncrasies. How do you prepare for this part with such highs and lows being a facet of the series? Is your work with Holmes mostly collaborative from an acting perspective, or does it stick to prescribed characterizations?

Pete and the other writers were enormously generous in that they rewrote the character of Kat to be more similar to me; she was originally written, I think, as being verbatim like the actual woman she’s based on. And then when I was cast, Pete and I spent a long while together talking and getting to know each other, and (with my permission) a lot of what we talked about and a lot of my life ended up in Kat. This is not to say that everything Kat says or does is something I would say or do! Please, God, do not think that. But we are similar, and that made it a lot easier to navigate the arc of the series, because I could relate to specific moments. And in terms of working with Pete, it was very collaborative—the show is scripted, but again, there’s such generosity in terms of letting us improvise to find a way of articulating things in a way that sounds truthful.

You’ve also performed improv during your career, specifically with Upright Citizens Brigade vets Ryan Karels and Neil Casey. How has that informed your theories of performance, and have you applied what you’ve learned from such training often during your sequences in Crashing and elsewhere?

I worked with those two guys while I was an apprentice at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (in Massachusetts), which was a blast—but I want to be clear that I never did a full circuit of training at UCB. Anyhow: those guys also espouse a kind of generosity of spirit while you’re interacting with a scene partner. How can you make this the most fun for the other person? How can you give them the most to work with? It’s not always about coming up with the funniest zingers or being the smartest guy in the room; it’s about making space for good accidents to happen. I take that with me everywhere, and not just when I’m acting.

OK … tell us a little bit about the hilarious “Trump Selftapes” that you’ve put on your website, www.madelinewise.com. These are all apparently things Trump has said, and you’ve re-acted them with your own unique stamp. What was the basis for this idea, and what is your goal for this series?

Ah, the Trump tapes! Here’s how that started: I figured out early on that I can’t stomach watching or listening to him, because he’s disgusting. I still wanted to know what hateful things he was saying, so I read transcripts. When I read the transcript of that Republican debate that had, like, 10 zillion Republicans involved, I got to the bit where he defends the size of his hands, and I thought, “Oh my God, this reads like a bad audition side for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” So I decided to make that audition tape just to amuse myself and my friends. And then I kept doing it. It was my way of metabolizing the insane things that the man who is our President says and does. I suppose the point of continuing with the project is to highlight how ridiculous he is. I don’t change anything about what he says; I don’t copyedit to make it more intelligible.

Which do you prefer: performing onscreen or onstage? Is there anything screen actors can learn from stage actors—and vice versa? What are you looking for when it comes to a film, in relation to script, role and behind-the-camera talent, and are there any upcoming projects that you’d like to mention you’re considering or are involved with?

I love them both. They flex different muscles. I don’t really feel like there’s that much of a difference between acting for stage and screen, aside from literally how loud you’re talking and how broadly you gesture. (Hint: It’s louder and broader on stage.) But in both you just have to tell the truth and honor the character. Maybe one thing is that in film you can afford to be slightly less precious—if you do a bad job in one take, no sweat, you can be better next time—and I think stage actors could learn that. (I’m including myself as a person who can learn/remember this.) You’ve got to surf whatever emotions you’re able to conjure up on the night. Sometimes you can’t cry when you’re supposed to, and that’s not the end of the world. Loosen your grip on the performance you’re imagining in your head and find the one that’s coming out now. It will still be interesting.

In terms of what I’m looking for: I’m in pursuit of good stories told well by excellent storytellers. I want to make things that make you feel the way you do when you’re at a concert, maybe a little too close to a speaker, and the lights are shooting around, and your whole body is vibrating. Or like when a dog looks you right in the eye and then winks or something. Things that make you feel nuts and connected and like a little raw nerve ending wiggling around in the breeze.

I’m really excited to get going on my next thing, which is the pilot of a new show written by Tom Kapinos and directed by Sanaa Hamri, which’ll be on Fox.