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" Scandal returns to the UK with its second season in just a couple of days now, so we have another chat for you! Joshua Malina&amp;#039;s David Rosen might not have been the biggest character in the show&amp;#039;s first seven episodes, but just you wait... Joshua recently spoke with reporters about David becoming a bigger character, David and Olivia&amp;#039;s relationship and pranking the rest of the cast - read on to find out what he had to say!  David Rosen becomes a big part of season two, right? Have you enjoyed his growth? &amp;quot;Yeah, I was delighted. Every step of the way I&amp;#039;ve been delighted. I did it as a one-off - I went, I auditioned, I got the part, I was thrilled. It didn&amp;#039;t even have to be sold to me - they told me it was [created by] Shonda Rhimes and I was like, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll do it!&amp;#039;  &amp;quot;They said, &amp;#039;But you have to read for her&amp;#039;, and I was like, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll do that!&amp;#039; But what they said was, &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s likely to recur&amp;#039;. And then likely to recur turned into, &amp;#039;They want you to guest on every episode of the first season&amp;#039;, which was fantastic, and then I made a deal that I would recur on every episode with simultaneously negotiating a deal to be a regular in season two if there were a season two and they decided not to get rid of me altogether!  &amp;quot;So every step of the way there was a little carrot that, &amp;#039;It could get better, it could get better&amp;#039;, and this is one of those rare opportunities where every step of the way it&amp;#039;s gotten better and each thing has happened and now I&amp;#039;m a regular. It&amp;#039;s continued on and on so it&amp;#039;s been really nice.&amp;quot; Is it a big thing to be cast by Shonda Rhimes? &amp;quot;Yeah! Absolutely. I feel like most actors pursue the best writing, and I just think she&amp;#039;s a great writer. I think she&amp;#039;s doing television that&amp;#039;s as much fun and captivating and well-written as anything else. She offered me episodes of Grey&amp;#039;s Anatomy and Private Practice that I happily did without a thought and when my agents called and said, &amp;#039;There&amp;#039;s a small part in a new pilot by Shonda&amp;#039;, I instantly said, &amp;#039;I want it, what do we need to do? I want this&amp;#039;.  &amp;quot;It is flattering to have somebody like Shonda - especially after having someone like Aaron Sorkin - to have people like that wanting to work with me over and over is very flattering, because for sure I want to continue working for them.&amp;quot;  How does your experience on The West Wing compare to Scandal? &amp;quot;A lot of similarities, certainly. Coming up in the School of Aaron Sorkin Delivery of Fast-Paced Dialogue and Hyper-Articulateness prepared me well for Shondaland, where there are many of the same factors at play. There&amp;#039;s also a similar feeling of a large ensemble of actors that I respect - the same thing in Scandal. I feel like I fill a similar supporting role in a large group, which I&amp;#039;ve just grown comfortable with.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a daddy with a 15-year-old daughter and 11-year-old boy, so it&amp;#039;s kind of a dream job in the sense that they both shot in Los Angeles. As much as I love travelling and doing something, this is fantastic. It would be a disappointment for me to take a job as often happens having to shoot out-of-town and not where I live. And then being part of a big ensemble allows me a lot of time off.  &amp;quot;The days are very long, but unlike Kerry, who&amp;#039;s working all day, every day in a nine-day shoot, I might be off for three days. So I can be the guy driving my kids to soccer practice, volunteering at my daughter&amp;#039;s school library, which I do. So I&amp;#039;ve gotten spoiled in a sense. To me it&amp;#039;s the ideal job, being a part of the machinery of these larger projects.&amp;quot; Do your kids watch the show? &amp;quot;They do not. My son is 11, I think it would be probably inappropriate! Look, if he were strongly interested, I think I would consider it. I don&amp;#039;t know the way he&amp;#039;s built - one, I don&amp;#039;t think he would be interested and two, I think it would be kind of inappropriate for him. I mean, my daughter watches Game of Thrones, so she would certainly be allowed to watch Scandal. I think my presence in it makes it uninteresting to her. She&amp;#039;s - in a healthy way, I think - uninterested in watching me on television.&amp;quot;  You were known on The West Wing for being a prankster - how about on this show? &amp;quot;I do get asked this a lot! Yeah, this show, the first year when I was a guest star I did nothing. I just wanted people to like me, I wanted to cause no mischief. As soon as I became a regular I started to plot, like, &amp;#039;Now I belong here, what can I do?&amp;#039; And I do all sorts of terrible things - a lot of them very, very low humour, very unsophisticated. I like to put shaving cream in the door handle of people&amp;#039;s cars and that kind of thing.  &amp;quot;The most elaborate thing I did is something that my son showed me, which allows you to call people and program in what caller ID they&amp;#039;ll see, so it seems to be coming from somebody else. I don&amp;#039;t know how or why this works but it does, it&amp;#039;s a website. And then it additionally allows you to disguise your voice as a woman or a man. I&amp;#039;ve listened to it and to me it sounds like a robot but it fools people! &amp;quot;The first thing I did was I called Columbus Short from the office of executive producer Betsy Beers - just programmed in her number. I should have done it from Shonda Rhimes&amp;#039;s office, but I didn&amp;#039;t want to get fired. So I thought, &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;ll get Betsy mad at me&amp;#039;. I left him a message from a female secretary, saying, &amp;#039;This is Charlene - Betsy really needs to speak to you very urgently, we heard about the incident on the set&amp;#039;, something like that. Something to throw him off. And then I just sat back waiting to find out - and I found out the next day that he was up all night, sweating like, &amp;#039;What have I done?&amp;#039; Then he called Betsy and they had no idea what he was talking about.  &amp;quot;And eventually I had every actor calling somebody - everybody was in trouble and Betsy&amp;#039;s office was starting to call down to the set saying, &amp;#039;What the hell is going on? Why are all the actors calling my office?&amp;#039; I called Katie Lowes as if I was from the National Enquirer seeing if she would sell any stories about her castmates. I created this utter pandemonium. I enjoyed that.&amp;quot;  It seems like Scandal&amp;#039;s a perfect show for you if that&amp;#039;s your thing... &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s what I feel like, exactly. Also, some of the material that we enact is so intense and dark and serious that off-camera people tend to blow off steam. So I&amp;#039;m playing practical jokes. Darby, Columbus, Guillermo and Kerry spend a ridiculous amount of time singing and dancing. Really, too much time.  &amp;quot;For season two I spent much of my time - whereas I hadn&amp;#039;t previously - a lot of my time at Olivia Pope &amp;amp;amp; Associates, so I was appalled to find out how much singing and dancing was going on. It&amp;#039;s like American Idol or something. I was like, &amp;#039;Can you guys calm down? I&amp;#039;m an older man, I can only take so much...&amp;#039; And Tony [Goldwyn] finally directed them and I remember saying to him, &amp;#039;Can you believe it?&amp;#039; He said, &amp;#039;It&amp;#039;s like 5-year-olds! What is wrong with these people?&amp;#039; So, there&amp;#039;s that.&amp;quot; Do you think David could end up becoming a bit more like Olivia? &amp;quot;Yeah, absolutely. I still think by contrast he&amp;#039;s the conscience of the show and is a cut above, but I think he&amp;#039;s also learned that trying to be in an absolute way to be ethically, to take the high road, isn&amp;#039;t entirely effective. We&amp;#039;ve seen Olivia&amp;#039;s willing to do all sorts of horrible things and to have her associates do even worse things in the name of whatever goal she&amp;#039;s pursuing. I think David is not quite there yet, but by the end of season two has certainly done some morally ambiguous things.&amp;quot; Do you think he could end up as far gone as she is? &amp;quot;I think not, but knowing Shonda it&amp;#039;s possible. We&amp;#039;ve seen people do all sorts of unexpectedly rotten things. He might have it in him. My conception of the character - and in the end, she really creates the character not I; I&amp;#039;m there to enact it and there&amp;#039;s an element of me but it&amp;#039;s really all her choices, it&amp;#039;s all about the writer - in my current conception of the character, I would say no. There just are limits to what he&amp;#039;s willing to do and he&amp;#039;s the kind of guy who&amp;#039;s maybe now for once going to maybe start bending the rules a little bit towards an end that he thinks is virtuous.&amp;quot; Do you think he&amp;#039;ll remain Olivia&amp;#039;s friend? &amp;quot;I think they&amp;#039;ll have the continued on-again off-again relationship that we&amp;#039;ve seen thus far, especially in the first season. One day they&amp;#039;re absolutely adversarial and the next day they have information they can share that will help them on something else, and I think that that will probably continue.&amp;quot; Scandal returns for its second season in the UK on Thursday (July 4) at 10pm on More4. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/ustv/interviews/a493887/scandal-joshua-malina-qa-davids-the-conscience-of-the-show/>