We were all inspired by him as an actor and his iconography and thought, if we get somebody like Laurence Fishburne, we can tell a much more sophisticated, complicated version of Jack Crawford than we'd seen before as this large and in-charge and in-control guy, who is unflappable.

I had always loved horror films, so I wanted to do something in the horror genre but wanted it to be sweet and charming at the same time. Because there's a difference between watching horror, where you can leave it behind, and writing horror, where you have to live in it for months and months at a time.

A poor white woman from the South is different than a poor black woman from the South, and has a completely different experience.

It's a neat experience to go from the blank page to an actor elevating it to the audience understanding it - the full life of that is why I became a writer.

One of the things that I always think about is the emotional sophistication of animals and how much we're learning about the emotional sophistication of animals. If you're eating a pig, you're essentially eating the equivalent of a four-year-old human being.

It's such a surreal experience, being shot out of the cannon for any kind of first season show. It all seems very dreamlike.

Dr. Lecter would have more sustenance on the spacecraft from Alien because there are more people to eat. I think he'd get hungry after a while in the Overlook - I can't imagine him eating canned food.