How does a TV series have different directors for episodes, sometimes even for consecutive episodes? How do actors adapt to different directing styles when a scene is split between episodes that have different directors?
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Movies are a director’s medium—the director has final say on a lot of elements. But TV is a writer’s medium, and the showrunner, who often started as a writer, has final say. Because each episode has a lot of pre- and post- production, it takes more than a week to direct an episode, but they might do many episodes on consecutive weeks, so need a different director for each episode that is filmed close in time to other episodes (especially with dramas; much easier with half hour shows). So a director can direct multiple episodes, but those episodes are usually spaced out by a few weeks at least. Though there are exceptions, like *Frasier* had only a few directors during the whole run of the show.
The showrunner is the one who will work with the director and the actors to be sure that the style of the episode and the acting of the characters is consistent from episode to episode, regardless of director.
An example: on the TV show MASH, a new character was introduced in 1972—an army draftee who dressed in women’s clothing and claimed to be a woman to try to convince the army that he was crazy to get himself a mental health discharge from the military (the TV show takes place during the Korean War, 1950-1953, at which time cross-dressing was literally considered to be a mental illness that could get you sent to a mental institution involuntarily). The *writer* aimed the humor *not* at how funny it is when people ascribed to be male say they are women and try to live as women (which is insulting to trans and gay people), but rather at how funny it is to see the lengths that this straight guy was willing to go to to get out of the army. The director didn’t see it that way and directed him to act in a way that embodied numerous cruel stereotypes about gay men and men who act effeminate. So when the showrunner and writer saw the performance during the screening of the day’s shooting at the end of the day, he alerted the director and they initiated another day of shooting where the character acted in the way the writer and showrunner had intended. I’m sure there are a zillion similar examples of ways show runners maintain the show’s tone and consistency, though this one is notable because the character was very offensive as originally depicted and so that probably would have been the last we’d have heard of him. But with the change in performance and change in target of the humor, the character became popular as a consistent source of new, absurd schemes to get out of the army, and the actor went from being hired for one day of work to being a regular on one of the most popular TV shows of all time for 11 years.
The actors are still playing the same character, but how they react to the different situation would be directed by the director.
They are still the same character which makes it a little easier, but they have to believe in how their character would act If that character had to respond that way. Instead of the character being affected on how they would respond.
Basically the initial problem, and the resulting solution won’t change, but it’s how they interpret how the character would respond.
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