BOP Oct. 1999

I wake up a 5 a.m. and try and pull my lazy butt out of bed. When my mom was here, I used to wake up to "Ry, do you want some breakfast of something?" Now that she's gone, I just wake up to "Eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh" [he imitates his annoying alarm clock]. As soon as I get up, I shower, wash my face and have peanut butter on toast for breakfast--because that's all I know how to make.

I make sure to read through my lines and then I go downstairs and wait for the studio to pick me up and take me to work. (They don't trust me to drive [he chuckles], so they pick me up). On my way to work, I go over the scenes again. As soon as I get to the studio, they put me in hair and makeup, which takes about an hour. Luckily, I don't have to wear a wig; they just take all the tangles out of my own hair.

After that, we go to one of two studios--one for inside shoots and one for outside shoots--and we shoot, shoot, shoot all day. The number of scenes we shoot really depends on how intense the scenes are. You know, sometimes we have huge special effects, so we can only shoot, like, two or three scenes a day. Other times, we just do real quick one-pagers and are able to shoot six or seven of them in one day.

I'm usually in every scene, so I'm on the set the whole day. I don't usually get a lot of breaks, but I do get lunch off. We get an hour for lunch around 2 p.m. and then shoot for another five hours. Usually, if we start work around 6 a.m., then we wrap about 7 p.m.

Taping the show is so much fun, but only if you're doing it. Otherwise, it's no fun to watch. I feel bad for people who come and visit me. Ask any of my friends--they will be the first ones to tell you it's the most boring thing in the world! But, still, I really love it.

When we're all finished taping, it takes me a while to get home. When I get back to my apartment, I just read through my scenes for the next day. I might go out to dinner if I'm really hungry, but they are pretty good about feeding us on the set--anything we need, they give us. I usually call it quits around 9 p.m. By then, I just can't even keep my eyes open!

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