Aidan Quinn talks His TV Directing Debut on Elementary, Fame, Pigeons and More!

As Captain Tommy Gregson, Aidan Quinn is in charge of the 11th Precinct of the New York City Police Department, where Sherlock Holmes (Jonny Lee Miller) and Joan Watson (Lucy Liu) work as consultants on homicide cases. But, this week, Quinn was captain of the entire Elementary episode when he made his television directorial debut with the It Serves You Right to Suffer episode.

“Giving orders is not how I approached it and not the tone I had,” Quinn told Parade.com in this one-on-one interview. “I would never presume to give Jonny or Lucy orders, but sometimes I would make suggestions about where I thought they could be standing, or sitting, or moving that would help the shot. They were incredibly generous to me, I have to say. I think they went out of their way to help me feel comfortable, and I went out of my way to make sure that they weren’t there too long and unnecessarily. I made a real conscious effort to do a lot of work on the shots so that we didn’t need to do extra coverage.”

In fact, Quinn was able to give his complete focus to directing because he doesn’t appear in the episode. And to make sure it wasn’t because he edited himself out, we had to ask why Captain Gregson is missing in action.

“That would be a good one,” he says, laughing in response to being asked about editing himself out. “No, I actually didn’t ask to be written out. John Polson, who directs  three or four episodes a year, asked the writers and the creators to try and keep me light in the episode and they went one better. They kept me out of it, so I was so thankful for that. That was so generous of them to do that because it really gave me complete focus on the directing.”

On tonight’s episode, when Shinwell (Nelsan Ellis) comes to Holmes and Watson for help after he’s framed for a gang killing, they have three days to find the real murderer before he is arrested and sent back to jail.

But before tuning in, read the rest of the interview with Quinn in which he talks about going behind the camera, what he did special as a director, fame, and more.

This is your directorial debut. What was it that made you decide you wanted to go behind the camera?

It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. I directed a play when I was 25, 32 years ago, and I loved it then, and between one thing and another, I just never got back to it, so when we started doing this series, I started asking year one, and finally I think they couldn’t say no anymore. We’re in year five.

How did you prep for it? Have you been shadowing directors? Did you take courses?

When I knew I had the job, for the last six months, I would shadow directors. I shadowed one of the main directors, John Polson, quite a bit, who is also our line producer, directing producer, who is with us in our office all the time. Then I would follow a couple other directors, just sit behind the camera with them, or when they had an art department meeting in preproduction, I would go in on it, so I did quite a bit of that. Of course, I do have almost 38 years of doing this.

But actually being in the editing room, that has to be a different kind of decision than what you make as an actor.

Yeah, well, it’s funny. I started making my living as an actor when I was 19, and when I was 20 or 21,  I had a fallow year or two, and my brother was in film school in Chicago, Columbia College, and he said, “Well, why don’t you get a grant? Just get a student grant and come join the film school for one semester while you’re not working, and I’ll put you in all my films, and you can be in all my friends’ films, that way you’ll get great experience,” and so I did that.

But in doing that, I had to make my own film, too, being in the film department for that semester, which was back when we were cutting film with razor blades and Steenbeck, so it was something I’ve been around all my life.

But I loved working with the editors because now, my God, it’s so much easier because they can just dial up the moment you’re talking about, instantaneously, and you can look at it together, even when one of you is in L.A. and the other one’s in New York. It’s amazing.

Was there something you had always wanted to see happen on the show — and I don’t mean that you had anything to do with storyline — but was there just something visual, maybe, that you had always wanted to see on the show, that you were able to make happen as the director of the episode?

There’s a scene where Sherlock is walking down the steps after interviewing gang members, where we have a really great location that has three flights of stairs going down to different streets in the Bronx, and we almost never get that kind of depth in Manhattan because usually it’s flatter and straighter. So the fact that we got that shot and got that location that was a big thing to have that kind of real detail.

There’s another scene where Sherlock is in a car with Nelsan Ellis and there’s a pigeon in the background while Sherlock’s doing a good bit of his talking. Those kind of things are, I think, really nice details to get when you’re in New York.

I read a quote that you really are happy with your level of fame, so I was wondering if that also is a perk of directing because if you are a director you’re a little bit more anonymous?

Well, I think no. I think my level of fame would play into my satisfaction with directing, but my satisfaction with directing comes from that it uses all of you, every part of you. You have to work with every department. You have to understand when to move on. You have to understand when enough is enough and you’ve got to provide because you’re losing the light, losing the day, and you have to do it and treat people decently so that you get the best out of them. I really loved working with the actors and we have a great crew.

But no, my level of fame, I think, is great in the sense that I can have a semi-normal life. That’s what I was talking about. As far as if I had more fame and had more interesting choices of more creative roles than that would be a trade-off that would be worth doing, but I’m not sure.

So you’re hoping to direct another episode of Elementary?   

Absolutely. Absolutely, and other directing, too. I hope I could do this on and off with acting for the rest of my life.

Elementary airs Sunday nights at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.