Even Corbett was surprised when Max sought out Pammy (Joey Lauren Adams), the woman his wife - or his wife's male alter, Buck - had had an affair with, and slept with her himself.
"I was pretty shocked when they let it go as far" as having Max cheat, Corbett said in a phone interview Friday.
"I liked it that Max frayed around the edges," he said.
"It's a treat to be on a show that's such a top-shelf project . . . but, you know, you want to shake it up a little bit now and then. You want to punch a guy and get tossed in jail. You want to just cheat on your wife now and then," he said, laughing.
And it's not as if Tara hadn't been out and about, he said, bringing up a scene in which she'd estimated her personalities had slept with 30 people during the course of the marriage.
"Max has had to watch 30 dudes over 18 years. Maybe he didn't know about them, though," he said.
Working with Collette, it seems, isn't nearly so complicated. "Toni just slips into these characters. You know, that was a concern of mine - how was Toni going to work? What's her process?" he said.
"Part you feels like, 'Oh, man, she's got such a heavy workload here, to be these characters that she's going to need to have her own space and stay in this character all day and won't be able to joke around in between takes.' You know, basically all the things that I like to do," he said.
But "as soon as they say cut, she's laughing and she's back to her Australian accent and that's such a blessing for all of us. Because that kind of acting, for me, gets pretty thin, you know, when you have to sort of tiptoe around it all day long."
Collette, he said, doesn't even mind the Flip Video camera he sometimes points at her during scenes.
