In college, my friend Melanie and I used to have weekly Jimmy Stewart viewings, and ‘Harvey’ seemed to make its way into the rotation an inordinate amount of times. – Rich Sommer
I wonder if games are maybe a terminus for ideas. Things can be books or movies or operas or plays, but once they’re a game, that’s where they should end. Things shouldn’t start as games and be taken to movies. – Rich Sommer
After ‘Urinetown,’ ‘Avenue Q’ and now ‘Mormon,’ is there an envelope remaining to be pushed? – Rich Sommer
I’m a Joseph Abboud fan. I’m a Hugo Boss fan. I’m a Brooks Brothers fan. As far as suits go, those are my go-tos. – Rich Sommer
I don’t know if it’s the sunshine, or the fact that I actually have a job, but I do like L.A. a lot. In New York, it can be gray and rainy and cold, and you still don’t have any money, and you feel like a bad Dickens character. – Rich Sommer
Three times a year, there’s Strategicon convention, and I go for the board games. It happens Presidents Day, Labor Day, and Memorial Day weekends. You go and take a look at the new board games and meet a couple of board game designers, and you can check out games you don’t own from the library and then return them. – Rich Sommer
For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for ‘Mad Men,’ I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That’s about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, ‘Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.’ – Rich Sommer
Gaming has been a great way to get to know people. That’s part of what I love about games, that they are social. – Rich Sommer
I’m very, very fortunate to be in the job that I’m in, and I would love for it to continue forever, but it won’t. I have to financially and emotionally prepare for the day that ‘Mad Men’ will go away, because who knows what my next job is going to be? – Rich Sommer
Anytime you’re on camera, 95 percent of whatever character you’re playing, unless you’re Daniel Day-Lewis – or maybe, no, pretty much just him – you’re cast because you’re you. – Rich Sommer
My only foray into anything stock-market-related was in my eighth grade social studies class. I have steered clear ever since. – Rich Sommer
I am a board game enthusiast, a board game evangelist, a board game nerd, but I wouldn’t say I’m ‘keen’ because I very rarely win, and ‘keen’ suggests you’re actually good at something. But I do play a lot of them, and I have a pretty good-sized collection. – Rich Sommer
My roomate at ‘Harvey’ is this guy Morgan Spector, an actor in town, and I’ve taught him Hive and Fastrack. Others have played For the Win, but Cards Against Humanity has been the dressing room hit. We’ve had the understudies, even Jim Parsons playing it. Our dressing room is practically sponsored by Cards Against Humanity. – Rich Sommer
So what’s so enticing about doing a play is that you get to do that thing that got you into acting in the first place… There’s a real attraction to being able to play, to just play. And that’s something that theater affords you. – Rich Sommer
The 12 years that I was improvising are why I got the number of commercials I got when I was in New York and why I got ‘The Devil Wears Prada,’ and it’s why I even got in the door for ‘Mad Men.’ – Rich Sommer
Part of what I love about games is that, even if you’re best friends with somebody, it gives you these sort of moments where you get to interact on a completely different level. You all agree to these abstract rules, but there’s nobody holding a gun to your head. – Rich Sommer
I would be lucky to be remembered as Harry Crane. That being said, I think it’s a goal for most actors to have the opportunity to play a variety of characters, so I hope any non-‘Mad Men’ role feels as separate as possible from Harry. – Rich Sommer
Improv definitely made me a better auditioner, without a doubt. We did do an audition semester in grad school, and that was helpful for those times that you have a script and you have a few days to prepare it, to really work on sides. But the auditions I was doing in New York, if you got it the night before, you were very lucky. – Rich Sommer
I abhor ‘baby talk.’ I speak to kids like I would any other person, and they seem to respond to it. – Rich Sommer
I’m very happy to say goodbye to the three-button suits. I hate three-button suits. Some people can pull them off, but they’re legitimately really, really skinny. Unfortunately, the only people who actually wear them are, like, Mr. Monopoly, and people like that. – Rich Sommer
I think not every improviser is a good stage actor. Certainly not every stage actor is a good improviser. – Rich Sommer
The worst job I ever had was as a telemarketer for, oh, I don’t know, I think I made it about 90 minutes. I quit before lunch. I went in around 10:30 or 11 and said, ‘I can’t do this.’ It was horrific. I had too many people yell at me within that 90 minutes to be able to continue. – Rich Sommer