Daily Inspiration Quote by Tom Skerritt

TV writing sounds like a technical craft, but Skerritt’s phrasing gives away what he’s really defending: television as a medium that doesn’t let writers hide behind polish. “Different than other mediums” is a modest claim on the surface, almost blandly professional. Then he adds the loaded part: “involving the writer.” Not “demanding,” not “centering,” not “crediting” - involving. It suggests a kind of constant participation, a long-haul intimacy with characters and story that film (often) doesn’t require and theater distributes among rehearsal, performance, and text.

Coming from an actor who built a career across film and TV, the subtext reads like a corrective to the old hierarchy where movies were art and television was work-for-hire. Skerritt is hinting that TV’s industrial rhythm - writers’ rooms, episode deadlines, showrunner authority, network notes - creates a different authorship. The writer isn’t a distant architect; they’re in the building every day, responding, revising, triaging. Television’s great innovation is also its trap: narrative that must keep breathing week after week, with characters evolving under audience feedback and production realities.

The line also quietly flatters actors while centering writers. “Involving the writer” implies that performance and writing are intertwined in TV’s ongoing process: actors aren’t just interpreting a finished script; they’re living inside an unfolding machine where the script keeps changing. It’s a small sentence with a big agenda: take TV seriously, because it forces writers to stay present, accountable, and alive to consequence.