Creativity Quote by Kevin Richardson

Richardson’s line is less an acting tip than a quiet map of how performance gets manufactured by the medium watching you. Musical theater demands “very big and very animated” because the room is part of the instrument: you’re playing to the back row, fighting distance, translating emotion into readable shape. The body has to do what a camera can do for you in a close-up. Big isn’t “overacting” there; it’s legibility, almost choreography, built to survive space, orchestra, lighting, and the shared electricity of a live crowd.

When he pivots to film and television as “more toned down,” he’s naming the opposite pressure: intimacy as a technical requirement. The lens is mercilessly close, microphones catch every breath, and editing turns a flicker into a headline. Restraint becomes a kind of honesty because the medium rewards micro-choices and punishes theatricality by making it look false. “Toned down” isn’t smaller feeling; it’s redistributed feeling, pushed into the eyes, the pause, the half-swallowed reaction.

The subtext is also about career translation. Coming from pop music, Richardson knows that every stage has its own contract with authenticity. On tour, charisma reads as volume; on screen, charisma reads as control. He’s reminding performers (and fans) that “realness” isn’t a personality trait so much as a calibration. Different platforms don’t just frame you; they change what counts as believable.