I’ve been a fan of Tom Cavanagh since he starred on NBC’s Ed a few years back. After that show finished its run I saw him on Scrubs and then, last season, he was the lead on CBS’s short lived series Love Monkey where he played a music executive with a conscious. Yeah, I watched that and was surprised that it didn’t find an audience.

But I’m not here to cover old ground.

Opening this Friday is Gray Matters which stars Tom Cavanagh, Heather Graham and

Bridget Moynahan. The premise is Tom and Heather play brother and sister who are extremely close – they live together, can finish each other’s sentences, in fact some people think they’re dating. Soon after that misunderstanding they agree on the need to meet new people. When Tom finds Bridget Moynahan, Heather’s character Gray starts to have some unusual feelings. Not the I’m jealous you found someone before me - more like I’m also attracted to your girlfriend. The film is a romantic comedy…just not the regular boy meets girl, some confusion happens, and then it all works out type. It's more of a romantic comedy about coming out of the closet.

The interview was held a few weeks back and was conducted via roundtable form – meaning around ten of us were asking questions. If you would like to listen to the interview click here, otherwise the transcript is below.

Gray Matters opens in limited release this Friday.

Question: How are you doing and what have you been up to?

Tom Cavanagh: That's a good question. I’m doing well. That's a generic answer.  What do you want to know?

Question: What are you doing this weekend?  How are you watching the Super Bowl?

Tom Cavanagh: Bears/Colts.  Well we have this movie that we're talking about Gray Matters is at the Santa Barbara film festival so I have to go up there so I'm going to be the guy all by himself in the hotel room watching the Super Bowl. ...neighbors shut up over there. I'll be inviting anyone by. Are you cleaning the room?  Do you want to watch?  Have some chips. Have some dip. That's what it's going to be like.

Did you and Heather have a special bond for both having being on Scrubs?

Tom Cavanagh: That's interesting. We never....we've been in the same episode but we our storylines never met.  I had a great time over there doing the show for years and they're great. They love her over there too.  It's almost like oh by the way you do Scrubs too. We'd forgotten about that. Heather & I got along from the beginning. I don't know if you've talked to her yet, but she's a very welcoming accessible person, she’s very nice.  We bonded over many things but Scrubs might not have been one of them.

What was the bonding process on this film?

Tom Cavanagh: Basically for us it was like it was her beating me up. Very early on in our time together she started slugging me during scenes and the first time she was like "I'm so sorry" and I was like "girl you can't hurt me" then it all became a thing whether she could actually you know, lay the beating on the boy. So a lot of our scenes and a lot of the more violent stuff actually didn't end up on camera because they're like "can you tone it down a bit because this isn't like Ultimate Fighting but we had a lot of that going on and ultimately that contributes to the brother sister relationship a little bit. Makes it seem a little more real on screen I think and she loved it I can tell you that much so it was fun.

Did she ever hurt you?

Tom Cavanagh: She never really did you know it was funny, she's a strong girl and in good shape but that must have been like the fact we had the scene going so I wasn't paying too much attention. I was more concentrating on getting the lines right but for all her wailing away I can't say I walked away with too many permanent injuries.

Was there a lot of freedom on this that you guys were trying to get the lines right but was there freedom?

Tom Cavanagh: Yeah, I think sometimes you get that with a first time director and other times you don't. In this case we certainly did. The old turf ship for her was not the most important. Getting the story right was. We had a lot of room to play around and Sue was gracious, the director, Sue Kramer was gracious enough to allow her actors to kind of get that kind of playfulness out on screen without worrying too much whether we were sticking to exactly what was in the script. That’s an indulgent way of kind of describing it and I don't mean to be that way but yeah we had the freedom to goof around the way brothers and sisters do.

Yeah, but this is a special kind of sibling closeness. How challenging is that really if you ended up with the wrong leading lead?

Tom Cavanagh: Yeah, it's funny I don't know that you have to get along wit the other person to do a competent acting job but I always do feel personally in my own personal opinion that something ephemeral gets translated to the screen when the people really like each other. It certainly doesn’t hurt the process if you like the other person I think.  We got along great. For Sue's movie she wanted these people to be 2 peas in a pod. They finish each others sentences, they get along, they have the same interests, they know everything about each other, and they’re very close.  Fortunately whether or not that translates to the screen we felt comfortable dong that. I come from a big family and this seemed very, for me anyway, seemed very familiar. Even that physical thing, not to make light of it but beating on each other, families do that.

Did you rehearse?

Tom Cavanagh: We didn't have a huge…the thing we rehearsed the most at the beginning of the movie there's an opening dance sequence.  Because we wanted to get that in a continuous shot we had to know the sequence, we had to know the whole thing. That one we spent a decent amount of time working on and that would be the thing we'd rehearse the most.

Heather was saying you really nailed the dancing. Is that....?

Tom Cavanagh: I think that's a generous way of looking at it. I mean if the mistakes are there, there are as you know but she again...that's a nice thing for her to say. She’s great. She's danced before, she's good. A woman who's light on her feet is always going to make the guy on her arm look better. I don't know necessarily that we look good but we're trying to because this movie for Sue, this movie is a tip of the hat to the 40's musical and when you lead with the song Cheek to Cheek you want to do that idea a service. It was a fun thing to do notwithstanding the fact that all my guy friends were like oh what another 4 hours of dance rehearsal with Heather Graham? Oh that's really tough.

Could you forgive someone who made out with the person you loved the night before you were marrying them?

Tom Cavanagh: Well, heck. I think that depends on the individual and the sequence and all that stuff.

Was it a hard place to get to I guess for this character?

Tom Cavanagh: You know, I think that's a good question first off. I also think that it's a bit of a....it's a focal point for the movie and I think no matter who you are you're stung a little bit when you know the idea of infidelity is raised be it like something frivolous like this you know a drunken moment that the person doesn’t even remember. But I think peoples' initial instincts are to protect themselves. I think in this movie that's where we go. The first instinct is like "what, with who?" and you feel....I think that's Sam's first instinct is to protect himself then better emotions or reasoning takes over after awhile and he realizes that this woman is his best friend not to mention she's his sister and there's probably another way of looking at it. Do you know what I mean?  To answer your first question that would be dependant on who you are and the individual you'd have to be in that situation which hopefully none of you ever are. Unless of course it's 2 women and.....

Have you ever met anyone randomly looking like you did in the movie walking through a park?

Tom Cavanagh: Yeah, I have. I'll never forget a friend of mine when we were in college together, this woman walked by and this woman is, to use a colloquialism, was out of our league, and we spent about 3 minutes talking about it and then he just went out....talking about how she was out of our league, not talking about what we could do about it, and then in mid-sentence he ran away from me and I have this distinct vision of him running across the quad stopping her like...you know like drawing back from him and him like suffocating with the hands and then coming closer and talking together and her writing out her number and him running back. It's just like wow, you're a superhero. Just like one of those great moments. It does happen whether you go to the extent of getting married on that first thing. That in this movie, and some people may call it a reach of cinema, but truthfully, I've had friends that have done that. They're not together still but I've also had friends who are together that have done that same kind of thing. You know, they've met the person and they know.  If Vegas is close, sometimes it gets consummated and solidified very quickly.

When you became an actor did the women who were out of your league before were they suddenly in the league?

Tom Cavanagh: Those women are still out of my league. Yeah.

About Valentine's Day, it's coming up and my editors are looking for either really romantic Valentine's Day story or a funny disaster story.

Tom Cavanagh: Somebody asked me this question and I realized that Valentine's Day is coming up and I wish I was the guy who had that great go-to story.  I think that in terms of like those go to stories you should ask Heather Graham that story. That’s all I'm going to say.

She said she didn't have one.

Tom Cavanagh: She stonewalled you, huh?

Do you know her story?

Tom Cavanagh: She didn’t volunteer it so I can't throw that out there.  Listen, no I can't.

Do you have any plans this year?

Tom Cavanagh: As awkward as that is this movie is coming out then in New York and we're going to....how romantic is that?  Hey, come to....you know the movie we're in.

That could work with those girls that are out of your league.

Tom Cavanagh: You think?  No, I think people see through that kind of sham.

What made you be this character?

Tom Cavanagh: First off the director, Sue Cramer, was nice enough to ask me to read the script and then her and I we both live in NY and we met for a coffee and talked about it and she asked me to do it which was very...I'm grateful she did. I had a great time doing this movie and I have to say Sue's idea....there's been a bunch of  movies coming out, or not a bunch I shouldn't say you'd know more that me but you know Chicago, the musicals are getting some attention but truthfully those things  are not remakes but remakes of existing musicals whereas this thing is...you know they did this movie recently called Down with Love or fairly recently which is a homage to those movies by essentially repetition whereas this thing is kind of a tip of a hat and making homage to the musical romantic comedies of the 40's but set in modern day. I don't know if we necessarily achieved it but I think that was a concept you don't run across every day. That was probably for the actors the most temping thing abut the movie.

Would you say that Sue wrote the character just for you?

Tom Cavanagh: No, I think Sue wrote these things very...I think the movie is semi-autobiographical and I think certainly the gay themes it touches on are stuff she's familiar with because when her sister came out of the closet there was something that she wanted to do to serve her sister and serve her sister's story. A lot of that is in this movie. I think she wrote the character to try to tell that story. I don't think she people in mind, but I know the minute she met Heather and this movie was 6 years in the making, but I know the minute she met Heather she felt "oh my God this is the woman who has to play Gray" and it worked out well because Heather is bankable and hopefully the kind of person who can get a movie made and put people in the seats. I think that was the first big step. My thing was...once they had Heather they could make a movie you know. Then it was just a matter of plugging in the pieces. Which by the way she did...you know you look at the cast of this movie the fact that you have Alan Cumming, Sissy Spacek, and Molly Shannon and Bridgette Moynihan, the cast of this movie ....for when we made it, a small independent, is a pretty nice cast that she put together.

What kinds of parts are you being offered these days and what kinds of parts do you want to play and is there a disparage between those two?

Tom Cavanagh: I think the key word there that I have to be careful of is offered. There's a thing where...there's a huge factor that is basically the do they want you factor?  The kinds of parts you want to play are wide and across the board from good guys to bad guys. The Warner independent movie I did recently called Sublime was a kind of a dark thing and it's something that probably I wouldn't be the first guy you'd think of but it's been extremely helpful to have done it to have people perceive you in a different light but at the same time as an actor all you can ask for or the thing as an actor that you want is being able to do the parts that go across the spectrum...good guys, bad guys what have you. Then again it comes to that thing well, do they want you? Then if they do, it's always a great thing.

Continued on the next page ---------->

Page 2 >>>