Biography

Half of comedy/theatrical team "Wallem & Tolan" with Linda Wallem.

[To participants at the launch of the 2011-12 TV season] Hey, you want to put tragedy in perspective? There's 9/11 and then there's the fact that you all have to watch everything on television. I mean, really, other than the loss of human life it's, like, right here.

[on 'Rescue Me' his series involving 9-11] You want to say, yes, people do survive, and they figure out how to go on with things. And that, ultimately, is what the show is about.

[on lawyer, Keegan Dean Joye, an unapologetic cad in 'Rake'] We need to get the audience comfortable with a guy who's this much of a screw-up and care about him. You can't push that too far, even though we have Greg Kinnear, who makes being a screw-up look charming and acceptable. There's a journey, a life progression with this character, which will get increasingly baroque as we go along. We want to tonally shift the story so that audiences will be surprised, to the point that they realize they're not getting the same thing every week.