When you're working on a television show with actors, what you hope you're doing is playing jazz with them all the time. You see what they're giving you, so you try to write back to that, and then they play with that, and you get a sense of what is going on. That's just a natural way in which TV series usually work.

There's been a lot of comparisons to "The Prisoner," and sometimes people take a negative tact on that, but to be really honest, I count that as a compliment, in the sense that what I felt "The Prisoner" was for the '60's, in how the individual triumphs over the state and authority, our show is really about how complacent we have become in our lives, which are scrutinized.

I feel confident that it will always keep everybody guessing, and yet not in that weird, maddening way where it's like, "Oh, come on, guys!" I think you will be freaked out by the end. I really do. I don't think you'll see it coming at all.

I'm not saying that I'm the grand genius that came in on a float and made it happen, but they liked my pitch. I was on my way to a camping trip with my daughter when my agent called and said, "This thing came up and it's really wild and crazy, do you want to read it?" And, I said, "Yeah, why don't you just send it to me? But, I'm going on this camping trip, so I probably won't be able to read it until I get back."

What we were trying very hard to do, just in the way we shot it, was to make it feel as if we're in that environment ourselves, just so we can get a grasp on what it is. A lot of our influence was about getting stuck on a level on any of those video games, where you find yourself caught and you can't get out, and it's maddening. We talked a lot about that.

I've always been a sci-fi geek, and I've always loved it. It's my favorite genre of all. The irony of ironies is that, in my early career, I just really never worked in it. "Star Trek" was very interested in me, partially because I did "From the Earth to the Moon," and I was really interested in them, but the timing just never worked out.

What we're going for, in those humorous moments, is the absurdity of it all. The craziness of the night manager offering them an umbrella in the height of what is a horrible disaster was like, "What?!" That's Andy Greenfield, and he nailed the audition. He's the sweetest guy in the world, as is often the case with those guys, but on camera, he's so creepy that a lot of us kept saying, "You know, Andy, don't look at us like that anymore, okay? You're scaring us."