The idea of the writer/producer in television is much younger than people think it is.

You don't want to be slavishly doing the same thing over and over again that everybody else has done, but at the same time, you're conscious of, "This is important. I owe something to my ten year old self right now. I need to respect that." I need for that kid who is obsessively reading comic books, I need there to be something rewarding for him where he's like, I didn't waste my time. I know what this is.

The funny thing for me is, I have never lived in a network world.

A "showrunner" as a position is a relatively new thing. It used to be the executive producer. That's not true anymore. Now it's evolved into this model where people look to showrunners and say, that guy is that show. It's just become a lot more interesting to know the showrunner and to get a sense of that person.

I really like transgressive characters that have an alternate world view. I've actually written a fair number of kids movies, and I'll insert these kid-friendly articulate sociopaths who are usually yelling at the children for their own benefit.

One of the things that I have always been interested in is the actual experience of people in their lives as opposed to what we think their experience should be.

I have always been drawn to characters, and this was true for my feature-writing career as well, where there is a tension between rule-breaking and rule-following.