I was 100 percent sure when I left university that I was going to be a painter.

Deirdre Maddon has an extraordinary, almost celestial way of telling a story. There are so many great writers now - although I also want to go back and read all of Dickens again.

I think it's very important to keep being frightened - if you're not frightening yourself, you should take a break. You need to keep experimenting. You also need to take time - that's how you do good stuff - layering and depth of knowledge.

I was interested in the mystical element of humor - was humor part of creation? Is God laughing at us, or with us?

You work with each individual actor as you perceive their needs to be. It's something that you've figured out in the weeks of pre-production.

Every work coming from the creator is about getting the demons out, and each character in those stories had a different personal crisis to get through.

One of the things that's good for me is that I can go from one art form to another.