Character

Richard Madden knows how lucky he is that “Game of Thrones” executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss didn't follow George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books exactly for Season 2 of the HBO hit. If they had, he would not have been in it. His character, Robb Stark, would not be arguing with his mother, defeating the Lannisters in battle or, maybe most importantly, meeting the woman of his dreams. “It was a huge compliment for me that David and Dan kind of believed in what I was doing enough to allow that to happen and me to run with it,” Madden, 26, told me last week during a phone interview.

Actors pull from real-life experiences to find their characters' emotions. Patrick J. Adams and Tom Payne probably didn't expect those experiences to be so immediate while filming HBO's "Luck" with Dustin Hoffman. "My first instinct was to run as fast as I could from that room because everything in my being was telling me I don't belong there," said Adams, who filmed his three-episode arc for "Luck" before he began work on Season 1 of USA's "Suits. " Adams plays ambitious securities trader Nathan Israel, who was hired by Hoffman's character, Chester "Ace" Bernstein, only after being put through his paces by the mobster during a job interview.

 After a career spent playing what he calls “jackasses,” Seann William Scott has no idea why he was the filmmakers' choice to star as a nice guy in “Goon.” Even if that nice guy, based on real-life minor league hockey player Doug Smith, specializes in beating the crap out of his opponents. “Most actors I think are kinda tiny - they're a lot shorter than you think when you see them - so maybe with the physicality [of the role], they had heard that I was a bit athletic,” says Scott, who notes that he was voted Most Friendly in high school.

In Fox's "The Following," Wilmette native Nico Tortorella plays one-third of a serial killer love triangle that henceforth shall be called "Jemmaul. " "Jemmaul, I like that," the 24-year-old told me, laughing, when I suggested that nickname, PauJaMma (pronounced Paw-jam-ma) and Jacmaul. "That's definitely the best one. " "Jemmaul" is Jacob (Tortorella's character), Emma (Valorie Curry) and Paul (Adan Canto), three people who have fallen under the spell of serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy)

Emily Blunt wants to jump off a building.   Don't worry; she's just talking about taking on an action role, which she hasn't had a chance to do yet. “Something where I have to wear a wire,” the English actress says with a laugh. “That could be good.”   For now, Blunt (“The Devil Wears Prada,” “The Adjustment Bureau”) is working on a smaller scale. In the low-budget romantic dramedy “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” opening March 9, she plays Harriet, who works with a fish expert (Ewan McGregor)

It's always interesting when two people you like and admire collide in the public sphere. David Simon, creator of the best television show of all the time, “The Wire,” and Bill Simmons, sports writer, podcaster and editor of Grantland.com came to a somewhat-reported blog-scuffle recently over Grantland's treatment of the eponymous HBO show. Simmons created a bracket for “The Wire,” a March Madness-style tournament to determine the show's best character (Omar won, as he should have)

Now that "Falling Skies"fans have seen how easily Ben Mason took down his older brother, Hal, in the Season 2 premiere of the TNT hit, Connor Jessup can reveal how shooting that scene with Drew Roy really went down. "I push him down, right? But I'm not doing anything! ... He was totally in control there," Jessup, who plays Ben, revealed. In the scene from Sunday's premiere, which was seen by 4.5 million viewers, Ben uses his alien-provided super-strength to grab Hal's arms and force him to the ground.

Earlier this fall, “Hart of Dixie” actor Wilson Bethel wrote on Twitter that he was “glistening like a Christmas ham” for an upcoming episode. Bethel, who plays bad boy Wade Kinsella in the CW series, seemed a little embarrassed while talking about being shirtless for so much of the episode, but said that it makes sense within the story and is used with a great sense of humor.   “It doesn't really enter into the realm of being egregiously ridiculous,” he told me shortly after filming the episode.

According to last week's report from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the number of LGBT characters on broadcast network TV is at its highest level ever. In a study of 97 scripted TV programs scheduled for the fall, 31 of 701 regular characters were identified as LGBT. As my mother would say, "The gays are everywhere. " She's right - we are. But what does this progress really mean? I can't help but think of the similarities to the period when black characters forged their way into mainstream TV through the '70s, '80s and '90s.

TV's most underrated current drama, "Southland" ( 9 p.m. Jan. 17, TNT; 4 stars ) launches a fourth season of LA.-based cop stories churning with chases, murders and a police station confrontation so violent and realistic you'll feel like you experienced it firsthand. The beauty of this series from Ann Biderman ("NYPD Blue"), Christopher Chulack ("Third Watch") and John Wells ("Shameless") is that no matter how electric the action is, "Southland" takes the time to powerfully reveal the lives and emotions of the LAPD officers involved.