Looking back, it's funny how the lighter family-friendly version of these classic Universal movie monsters that were satirized in The Munsters seduced me like a gateway drug into the genre.

As an animal lover and as a sometime-meat-eater, I've read so much about the emotional sophistication of pigs and cows and sheep that I do think twice when I do still eat them on occasion.

As a horror movie fan, I was very obsessed with horror films. Still am. I love the genre. For me, horror films are opera, and they are... instead of consumption killing off the young lovers, it's Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers. It is when the stakes are at their absolute largest in a story: whether somebody is going to live or die. In a way, it's just holding up a mirror to life.

I'm not always successful, but I take my job as a storyteller very seriously and want to make sure the audience has as much fun watching it as I am creating it.

Growing up, there were a lot of funerals that I attended, and the adults at the funerals went out of their way to make sure that I wasn't traumatized or overly depressed by them. So death is always a celebration of life for me, and it's also hugely dramatic.

I'm very hard on myself when it comes to writing.

I think the progressive audience that loves Star Trek will be happy that we're continuing that tradition being progressive and all-inclusive. Star Trek's not necessarily a universe where I want to hear a lot of profanity.