[Ferguson] To have a show last for 11 years is just unheard of.
It's the greatest job security I've ever experienced as an actor.
Those little things.
Knowing that right now I could call for, say...
I could have a piece of banana bread.
Yeah. I'd like a piece of banana bread and an Advil!
-And it will appear. -It'll appear.
-It might take a while.
-Might take before this docu-- -And they're gonna think
we're crazy for asking for that, but...
someone will get it. [chuckles]
[Lloyd] All right, let's go. Let's do it.
[applause]
[cheering]
What's great about the table read is
there's, sort of, an ever growing audience of people that come to our table reads.
So it's a chance for us to learn how the scripts feel in front of an audience,
almost like a play.
That feedback from our, sort of, audience that comes in the way
that multi-cam that's done in front of a live audience,
you get that gratification of seeing the audience's response.
That's our version of it.
[Stonestreet] "His career is on life support."
"Your glee at another man's misfortune should trouble me,
but there's also something sexy about it."
[Stonestreet] "Power's an aphrodisiac."
[Lloyd] "Mitch approaches Cam."
"Hmm. Maybe later you could be the principal,
and I could be the student who's a few credits short.
I'm a bad, bad boy who needs to be taught right from wrong.
Because I grew up in a broken home,
where social workers and fights about money were constant--
Oh, now I'm just sad."
[laughing]
[Stonestreet] People that come to the table read get to see
it's the writers hearing their words for the first time.
It's, a lot of times, as the show's gone on, our first time really reading it,
because, you know, 200 and some episodes in,
the scripts come out a little later sometimes.
I got that script just last night.
It's really that energy of creativity that's happening.
[Ferguson] For me, it's always been the one opportunity during the week
that we're guaranteed to see the rest of the cast
because we shoot so many things separately,
and if we're not integrated as a full family, we don't see each other,
so it is that one opportunity to sort of come together as a group,
and just sort of check in with each other.
[laughing]
[Lloyd] It just is a learning experience.
You sort of have an idea about what jokes are gonna work,
or how a story is gonna play,
but you don't really ever know until you go to a third dimension on it,
which happens with the actors actually performing it out loud,
and you hear a whole different rhythm.
So we learn a lot,
but it's also mostly just a really fun experience to go through.
[O'Neill] "The Brylcreem kid was me."
[laughing]
And from that point we do another rewrite on it,
to develop our final draft
and that's what we bring down to the stage and becomes our shooting draft.
We move fast around here.
-Nice to see you again. It's been a while. -Yeah.
[Levitan] We come in,
and we'll immediately have a rehearsal of the first scene up.
We'll just walk through it, get a sense if the scene's working,
and then the actors go off, get in hair and makeup,
while the crew takes usually about 20 minutes or so
to get the place all lit properly and set up.
-[man 1] Steven. -[man 2] That'll get you going.
And then we shoot it.
[alarm blaring]
[woman] All right, here we go, guys.
[woman clears throat]
[crew member shouting]
[director] And action.
I still can't find any '90s thing that rhymes with Michael Bay.
Dr. Dre, Ellen's gay, Y2K?
Don't you have someplace to be? It's boys' night. No chicks allowed.
[Levitan] We're shooting at the same time. We're editing at the same time.
We're doing all sorts of things, so it's kind of a three-ring circus around here.
There's all kinds of, like, fun secret hidden things
that people don't know about.
For example, when we need to memorize our lines,
we have these little sides,
and we just stash them in drawers when we're done with them.
We literally have old scripts from just years ago.
You guys wanna follow me back here,
I actually have something really cool to show you.
So, for the ten seasons our show has been on, coming on 11,
we've been marking off our heights, just like a real family,
on one of our door jambs.
You can see this is when I was 12.
So, two seasons into the show,
I'm here and Ariel I think is-- Yeah, right here.
So you can see how much taller she was than me.
And then at a certain point, we kind of even out,
and then she stays here, and here I am up here.
Get a couple, get a couple extra inches. There we go.
If there's one thing that I'm gonna take from the show when it ends,
it's gonna be this entire door frame.
I don't know what I'm gonna do with it, but it's such a special memory,
I'll install it into my house or something.
It sounds a little clichéd, but we are like one giant modern family.
And I'd have to say that my favorite part about coming into work every day is,
you know, getting to see the people that I basically grew up with
and became a whole second family to me.
[Levitan] What I love most about this job is coming in
and being surrounded by funny people.
[groaning]
-Thank you. -There's no banana bread.
-Okay. -What is this?
A piece of bread and banana.
Okay, that's just white bread and a banana, but...
But we do have the Advil.
-Okay. -See? We told you this would happen.
-We asked... and they delivered. -They improvised.
You know, even in your hardest day,
you're sitting around a room with 12 of the funniest people that you know.
The main goal of that day is to try to make each other laugh,
and that's a pretty crazy job.