The show is not a history lesson or intellectual exploration. It is entertainment based on tension, irony and storytelling that is closely related to today’s life.

As far as casting, I'm there for every single person that's cast. Even if it's one word, I'm there for their auditions.

Identity is part of drama to me. Who am I, why am I behaving this way, and am I aware of it?

I'm in the entertainment business, where you're only as good as your last show.

In movies and TV, we tend to fall into tropes about how characters might get out of problems. But when you look at real life, you realize that there is a lot of drama of not being able to get out of the problems.

That's the miracle of telling a story in film: You can express something inside someone's mind.

The chance to tell personal, language-specific, culturally specific stories is really flourishing on TV and I think it's just the nature of movies and international demands that you need to get a much bigger audience. TV is more like independent film was. The forms of adult drama and certain kinds of sophisticated comedy, there's no room for them in the tentpole movie universe.