Howie Mandel on whether he was a fan of Monk prior to his guest appearance:

"Absolutely. I have been watching it for years and [I'm] a big fan of Tony's, a big fan of the shows. I actually think of it as more of a self-help show for me and entertainment, but first and foremost self-help. It makes me feel very not alone in the world. He portrays what I live inside."

Tony Shaloub on picking up new rituals:

"Well, I actually I have picked up a number of things from Howie while I was working with him. And, you know, I'm more apt now to just touch fists rather than shake peoples’ hands. That's actually happened, so I'm forever grateful to him for that."

Shalhoub on getting feedback about OCD from fans on the street:

"You know, I get it all the time. People approach me on a regular basis. They're always saying that they feel like Monk has helped them and that the show has kind of de-stigmatized the disorder. And that's kind of gratifying, because that's really not something we intended from the start. It's just kind of a happy accident that's happened."

Mandel on comparing Monk's obsessions to his own:

"They compare. Obviously Tony has been brilliant in putting a face and a form of entertainment to this very serious disorder, and it is a serious disorder. OCD, I think in America, we did a PSA yesterday and over two million people in America are inflicted with this, including myself. And even though I poke fun at it and I don't shake hands and I've talked about one small aspect of being a germaphobe, it encompasses your life. So to see a character like this on television, it does de-stigmatize, you know, and it has brought it out of the closet... How does it compare? I mean, it is a great caricature because it's put in an entertainment venue. It is a great caricature of the hell that anybody who has it has to deal with each and every day. And I have to deal with each and every minute of my life. In fact, as I speak to you, I'm on a speaker phone because I don't want to touch the receiver."

Tony Shalhoub on finishing the season and the writer's strike:

"Well, because we shoot our season in two blocks, we were shooting the second block or the last seven episodes this past Fall. And we were able to complete all seven of those and our last script was submitted a day or two before the strike. The script was intact. It didn't need any tweaking or anything, so we just shot it out. And we shot it out in about two weeks, which was the first two weeks of the actual writers’ strike. So the show - we were on a four-month hiatus now anyway starting - it goes from mid-November to mid-March. So we're not impacted by the strike in the short term. But if the strike does go much longer, you know, into January or into February then of course we will be affected. Because our writers won’t be able to go back at their normal time, which would be about tomorrow, and then we wouldn't be able to start shooting on our normal start date, which would be March - third week of March. If the strike resolves itself in the next month or so - the writers can start up and that might delay our start date, but we would still have new episodes to put on in the summer for the beginning of Season Seven."

Shalhoub on keeping Monk fresh and interesting:

"Well, I think it's a tribute to our writers. They're constantly expanding our universe and throwing curve balls at me and challenges at me. We have such a great creative team and we really feel like the last year and a half the show has - more than ever - kind of become a true ensemble piece. The support from the other actors and the writers writing to those characters more, fleshing them out even more, has kind of just cemented the whole thing. I mean, I guess I just feel that we're at a very, very fortunate situation. We have such a great creative team of people who love to work together."

Shalhoub on the continuing story thread of his wife's death:

"We touch on the Trudy story not on every episode, of course, but at least four or five times during a 16 show season and in the back seven. Well, actually the back seven included a Christmas show, so we're really airing six in a row now. I would say at least a couple of those touch on the Trudy story. Trudy's death and her place in Monk's life figures very heavily in the cult episode, because Howie's character, just by talking to Monk in their first meeting, recognizes that there's a hole in Monk's heart and he very quickly assesses the situation. He sees that I see there's something missing and what's her name. He says, 'What was her name?' before any discussion has come up and so Trudy factors in quite heavily there."

On whether Mr. Monk will join the military:

"Mr. Monk goes to Iraq, no. Well, you know, to be totally honest with you, I am kind of amazed that they can keep finding these situations for me. And I wait with bated breath every time I crack a script open to find out where I'm going to end up."

Shalhoub on Monk hitting the big screen:

"You know, it's so funny you asked that because it's something we talk about all the time. We would love to do that. The writers [and] the producers have kicked this idea around for the last, probably three or four years. I'm hopeful that it would happen and I think we've kind of in this two-parter that I mentioned, which is coming up at the end of this run of shows. I think we've kind of proven that we could pull it off, because this particular episode, it's really cinematic and it's got all the elements that the audience I think has come to appreciate about Monk. But it just feels like a feature, so the answer is I really hope so."

Howie Mandel and Tony Shalhoub on the type of cult leader Howie plays on Monk:

MANDEL: "Yes. The nation of Jim Jones, I actually watched a documentary but it's just as incredibly charismatic. He has the world by the tail. I mean, this is just his world and there is no other world but his world. So, you know, I don't know if he's as evil as his intentions are as evil - well, I don't know that Jim Jones, his intentions were evil. But if you're causing harm to children, then in my book you're evil. So it's not as heavy and edgy as Jim Jones was. But it's just a guy you, instead of trying to fit in the world, creates his own world. And it was a wonderful, meaty, great role. Well-written, well-directed and I had great company to bounce off of."

SHALHOUB: "I love the idea of it, because the cult leader in a lot of ways is like Monk in the sense that he's really great at kind of reading people and discovering what their vulnerable places are. And kind of manipulating them and ultimately brainwashing them. But I talked to the writers about checking out a movie that had a real impact when I was - this was a movie I think in the early '80s, [it] came out in the early 80's called Take It to Heaven, I think. It’s a Canadian movie about a cult, a guy who gets drawn into a cult and then deprogrammed. They checked out this film and they kind of tried to incorporate some of the ideas into our episode. And it's true to Monk [and] the Monk style. I mean it certainly has its comic beats, but it's a very serious kind of universe that this cult operates in. What I love about the episode is that you could sort of see how these things can impact people so greatly."