Unlike actors who portray humans, playing a hologram meant that
Robert Picardo had to be precise with his dialogue and was not able to "fumfer" his lines.
As reported by IO9, Picardo had to pay attention to what he said and how he said it. "I have the big dialogue days. You play a hologram on Star Trek, and you have to spew line after line. I spoke in paragraphs on Star Trek. So I think they liked the fact that I handled dialogue pretty well, so they give me stuff to say. But on the other hand, now that I'm playing a human and not a hologram, I'm allowed to say things like, 'Well, uhh,' or 'You know...' which I could never do before. I had to be precise and I could never fumfer [mumble]. Now that I'm just a person I can fumfer occasionally. Not fumfer like soap opera actors fumfer when they can't remember their lines, which is one of my favorite things to watch. 'Hey, uh, you know man.' That kind of thing. I don't do that."
According to Picardo, the EMH was like Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation in that both were "know-it-alls." "I liked being a know-it-all. Of course, he was a know-it-all too. But I was sort of a stuffy, arrogant, curmudgeonly know-it-all, where he was a childlike, sweet and Pinocchio-like know-it-all. We were both know-it-alls. Is it knows-it-all or know-it-alls?"
Having a surname similar to the surname of another famous Star Trek Captain brought Picardo some ribbing from a guest star, Andy Dick, who appeared on Star Trek: Voyager: Message in a Bottle. "The first day on the set, he [Dick] said to me, 'Hey your name is Picardo. It's so close to Captain Picard. Do the fans make fun of you?' And I said, 'Excuse me. Your name is Andy Dick, and you're going to make fun of mine?' And after that, we got along pretty well. He's wild."
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