Everything was so designed by Hannibal to break down Will in the first season, until Will's sanity became questionable. It's so much easier to believe that somebody losing their mind is capable of terrible things than it is to consider Frasier Crane, a charming, fun doctor who invites you to dinner. If you put those two in a police lineup, you're going to pick the guy who's melting down.

Race totally matters. Race totally changes your point of view. It's a different experience.

I think Eddie Izzard is one of the brightest minds of our generation. I don't see him as a comedian as much as I see him as a philosopher. I hope I get to work with him on everything until I die, because I think he has a great mind and is a very talented actor.

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

I love the supernatural in storytelling. The Twilight Zone was a huge influence on me, in terms of writing and storytelling, where you're not restricted to the parameters of reality to tell your tale.

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.

What I enjoy about my work is that it's all things that I wanted to see as an audience member so there's part of me that understands what an audience wants to see in that respect.