I live in New York, so I'm used to the audiences that cheer and clap through a play. It is unusual for London audiences.

The theater is a communal experience, and whatever the emotional connection between an audience member and the actors onstage, it ripples through the whole audience. Part of the fun of the play is being a part of that audience.

I find it very invigorating having Ken Lonergan, who's an established, Pulitzer-nominated playwright doing Howards End, or Chris Hampton who's won an Oscar writing a TV series, or having an actor like Mark Rylance, who is probably England's leading theater actor, in the lead in Wolf Hall.

The White Queen in many ways it is representative of the sort of drama that I'm talking about. The books by Philippa Gregory were best sellers and they specifically told the story of history from the point of view of women.

I had read the scripts that Nora Ephron had written as a movie about Mike McAlary. We were never able to make it at HBO because we couldn't cast it properly and when I left I called Nora and said, "Look, I actually think that the movie luckyguyindustry has changed. It's very unlikely that you'd be able to make this as a movie. I actually think it's a play."

At heart, I'm really interested in this marriage of theater, film and television and I think what happened in the UK and obviously is happening here is that there's a convergence of talent kind of moving between the different disciplines and I find that very exciting.

The notion that the staging of the play Harry Potter should be raw magic and street theater rather than high-tech theater, was essential.