“I have to be my character's best defense lawyer. Even if my character is going to do something bad, I need to explain to the jury, even though they're going to say she's guilty, I need to just explain to the jury but why she did it.” Maitreyi Ramakrishnan · Dinner’s on Me with Jesse Tyler Ferguson
Food & Beverage · September 2026
Ramakrishnan and Jesse Tyler Ferguson have been talking about how too many margin notes on a script make an actor rigid. This is how she describes her own process now, and she follows it with a joke about her Velma: she killed him, but let me explain why.
Transcript
don't know how long it's going to serve me. I don't know, man.
I think, listen, I don't either. And I'm well into this industry and I feel like I keep when you put too many notes in the margin of like what your intention is, it's just like you get, I personally get way down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Too
locked in, and then I'm not flexible to what a director wants or what like my team partner might throw at me. Cause like, you know, I want to mix. But my process when it comes to characters now, how I describe it is I have to be my character's best defense lawyer. Even if my character is going to do something bad, I need to explain to the jury, even though they're going to say she's guilty, I need to just explain to the jury but why she did it.
Right, right, right. You know,
Velma's gonna understand. She killed him. But let me explain to you why. It's
character protection. You know, it's like you have to love who you're playing.
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