Memories From The Set: Thomas Sadoski

Season 16's "Criminal Law" episode centered on a hit list featuring Jack McCoy's name — or, as Sadoski remembers it, "That's where I first met Sam Waterston, and I had to try to assassinate him on the steps of the courthouse." During a break in the location shoot, Sadoski says, Waterston made a point of striking up a conversation with the young actor. "He just patted me on the shoulder and told me that I was doing a really good job, and he went back to his chair. It meant so much to me at the time." Years later, when they both were cast in HBO's The Newsroom, "I got to share that story with him," Sadoski says, chuckling. "Of course, he didn't remember, because he shot like 4 million of those episodes."

The Season 7 episode "Lonelyville" included "one of the first sex scenes I ever had to do on camera," Sadoski says (see inset); as such, there was extensive discussion about the, ahem, blocking of the moment. "What they asked us to be mindful of was not thrusting too much, because network TV audience couldn't handle too much thrusting," he remembers, laughing. "It was my first coming face-to-face with... the absurdity of it all because here I am doing a show like Criminal Intent, where a Ukranian woman is brutally murdered at the beginning of the show, and then they're like, 'But don't thrust, because that offends people."

"When I took the part, Ryan had a last name, and he was going to be Betty's new love interest," Sadoski says of his Season 3 stint in the Mode universe... which wound up being much shorter than advertised. The part was "pared down to the point where I ended up having two or three lines and that was it," he says. "then I lost my last name and became 'Ryan the Caterer.'" Though he recalls the job "with a little bit of frustration," Sadoski enjoyed his brief time with the series' leading lady. "I'm really a huge fan of America [Ferrera]'s," he says. "She's phenomenal, and she was so lovely on set."

Rollins' descent into a gambling addiction: Bad for the detective, good for Sadoski — he showed up twice on the NBC procedural as the rock-bottom cop's Season 15 Gamblers Anonymous hook-up. (He'd previously appeared as a different character in Season 11.) "Warren Leight, the showrunner, was just obsessed with making sure that I was wearing the douchiest hat possible," he says. "I kept on trying to find ways to lose the hat... and Warren was like, 'No. He has to wear the douchey hat."

A slow clap, please, for Don Keefer, the cable news executive producer who seemed like a huge jerk at the beginning of the HBO series but was one of its MVPs by the end. At least, that's how we saw it. "The first chunk of the first season, he was definitely set up as the foil. You want Jim and Maggie to get together, and then here's this guy standing in the way — but what guy in the face of his girlfriend falling in love with another guy isn't going to be a little bit of an ass?" he reasons. "It made complete sense to me." Sadoski adds that he never thought his character was that bad of a guy, "but it was fun to watch people's feelings on Don... evolve over the course of three seasons."

"The chair gag" — in which Don is forced to sit in a chair set way too short for his desk (and in which he eventually flips backwards) — "was fun. We had a really good time with that," Sadoski says, adding that he and series creator Aaron Sorkin share "a mutual appreciation for how funny it is to watch people slip on banana peels." As for the Sloan-Don relationship: Sadoski said he and Olivia Munn were the last to know that their characters were going to become a pair. "Aaron kept us guessing all along," he remembers. "Slowing stuff down and dragging it out really worked well, and we weren't entirely sure that it was ever going to come to fruition. We didn't know what was going to happen until we got the episode, looked and saw, 'Oh, there it is, OK. We're making out."

Filming NBC's adaptation of an Australian miniseries about the drama stemming from one suburban moment "was a long haul," Sadoski says. (He played Gary, the father of a young boy slapped by another adult at a party.) The longest night? When Gary finds a suicidal Ritchie near the river. (Did we mention the production shot in New York City in the middle of winter?)  "I was covered head to toe in those little hand warmers that were stuck on me. I looked like a fish underneath my clothes," he says, laughing. "It turned out to be a great time, but it was one of those moments where I really appreciated how hard it is for the crew on a film set."

In the new CBS comedy, Sadoski plays Matt, a down-on-his-luck man who returns home to live with his parents during a rough patch in life. "When you live at home with your parents, all sorts of strange things get walked in on," he says. "Then, to get to have my parents in that situation be James Brolin and Dianne Wiest makes it even more delicious and fun to play." The ensemble also includes Colin Hanks, Zoe Lister-Jones, Dan Bakkedahl and Betsy Brandt, meaning there are many shooting days "where the vast majority of us have been in hysterics," he says. "Our gag reel is going to be extensive."