Whenever I tell people I'm a misanthrope they react as though that's a bad thing, the idiots. I live in London, for God's sake. Have you walked down Oxford Street recently? Misanthropy's the only thing that gets you through it. It's not a personality flaw, it's a skill.

"Proper work" usually involves performing a task you hate on behalf of people you'd gleefully club to death with a bull's knee if only it were legal to do so.

One of the benefits of aligning yourself with an indistinct cluster of people is that claiming to feel their pain is often enough.

The internet's perfect for all manner of things, but productive discussion ain't one of them. It provides scant room for debate and infinite opportunities for fruitless point-scoring: the heady combination of perceived anonymity, gestated responses, random heckling and a notional “live audience” quickly conspire to create a “perfect storm” of perpetual bickering.

Overall, looking at the stories [Black Mirror], almost every story we've ever done is concerned with authenticity or reality in some way.

I wasn't really aware they were a religious organization for quite some time. But my grandparents were very devout and ran a Quaker meetinghouse and were missionaries at one point.

What happens often is the script is written and once the director comes on board you have lots of conversations and it mutates again.