Winging It.
Over the many, MANY years since I was lucky enough to work on “Wishbone,” the question I am most often asked - by far - goes something like this:
How much of what you did on the show was scripted, and how much did you ad-lib?
It’s a fair question. The truth is, I don’t know. I did ad-lib, a lot. One of the things we learned early on in production was that Soccer (Wishbone’s real name) would often do something on camera that wasn’t exactly scripted. He might sneeze unexpectedly. He might skid across the floor. I remember one instance in which one of his ears was sticking straight up through an entire scene. When the camera captured these moments, we didn’t want to just throw them out. That’s when the director would, essentially, turn me loose on the scene. The challenge was to come up with something vocally that made sense with the action, while still staying in the structure of a scene. In the biz these are often called “throw away” lines, but if performed correctly they can add some humor to a moment.
It was our good fortune that we had lots of those moments.
I remember one in particular where we open on Wishbone coming down the stairs in his home. There was nothing scripted. At all. So I decided to try something. As a kid, I would always make a bouncy sound as I loped down the stairs, emphasizing with my voice when I would land on each step. (I’m not saying I still do this as an adult. But I’m not saying I DON’T still do it, either.) Anyway, the result was that everyone in the studio laughed hysterically, which almost always meant that whatever I had done would stay in the scene.
And so it went for every episode. Sometimes there was more ad-lib needed, many times we used less. The hard and fast rule was it had to fit within the scene and add to it, but take nothing away. Steph Simpson (our head writer and showrunner) was always in the studio on recording days to keep me honest. And to remind me, quite frankly, that this was a FAMILY SHOW. I could only go so far off the rails.
Did you have a favorite moment in an episode where it sounded like Wishbone might be winging it? Hit me up in the comment section, and I’ll tell you if you were correct.
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