Hard to imagine much tension between Nolte and Hoffman, whose "Luck" characters occupy somewhat different spheres in the show's complex universe. We'd already seen Nolte, who plays a veteran trainer-turned-owner, picking something off Hoffman's shirt at the news conference.
And it's possible Hoffman, whose character's a mover and shaker fresh off a three-year prison stretch, might've nudged the sleepy-looking Nolte into consciousness once or twice.
Those two seemed to be at a different party altogether, one where Nolte's impression of "Luck" co-star Richard Kind doing an impression of Nolte in a long-ago stage performance for actor George Segal (who's so far not in "Luck") was too entertaining to be interrupted - or even triggered - by an actual question, though I'd apparently gotten the ball rolling by asking if either of the actors had ever had this many hours with a single character.
Nolte reminded me he'd starred in the 1976 miniseries "Rich Man, Poor Man" and noted that television is "a brilliant way to work if you have brilliant material. It's better than film, and I'll tell you why: Film, you know the beginning, middle and end. You know the end, you do. And in that sense, you can really focus and create a very interesting character, make the transitions seamless and everything else, but you've got the end. In this, when we're handed the script every two weeks . . . and it's a surprise."
"It's the closest thing to life that I've ever done," said Hoffman, who acknowledged knowing nothing about television, or indeed, about Milch's work, when Mann called him about the part.
