If I write scripts that nobody likes, I don't think we'll be doing 'True Detective.'

You just do the best you can, and when you're able to connect with people, and when you do, it's just incredibly gratifying.

In the summer of 2010, I had decided to get into film and TV writing, so I wrote scripts for six different ideas I had developed, and the pilot for True Detective was one of them.

I didn't come to Hollywood to be subservient to anyone else's vision.

I find the constraints of drama actually freeing: It brings everything down to character and action.

The idea of being a show runner was very attractive to me, to create and control something.

Whatever story you're telling in Louisiana, the landscape is going to become a character in it.