Casting is really weird. Honestly, when Alan Ruck's name came up - and I've worked with Alan before - I went, "Yes, he's perfect." He came in and read for us, which was really sweet of him because he didn't have to, and he nailed it in seconds. We knew exactly who we had. That stuff is really good and fun.

Suddenly, I realized how tough trying to structure a story like this is. It was a lot of work. The one big advantage that we had was that we had eight scripts written before we started shooting, or even started casting. We had a really good opportunity to look at it and figure out where we were going to go and how to do it. Once we got a cast, which I love, then we started doing some revisions to make sure that they fit into it.

I think that was in the discussions when NBC finally bought it and was trying to figure out how to distinguish it as an event. I'll be honest, we did shoot it with the idea of it being an on-going series, but because I am insane when I get to the end of a season and they give you a big, giant cliff-hanger with no answers, I insisted that we provide all the answers to the questions that we set up, at the beginning.

And then, what I hope will happen at the end is that there will be a big enough springboard that, if we chose to go for a second season, we would have one. But, there will be none of those maddening teases that we're going to tell you the answers and then we don't tell you the answers. That gave NBC the idea of making it a mini-series.

Casting is really weird. Honestly, when Alan Ruck's name came up - and I've worked with Alan before - I went, "Yes, he's perfect." He came in and read for us, which was really sweet of him because he didn't have to, and he nailed it in seconds. We knew exactly who we had. That stuff is really good and fun.

What we're really trying to tell, even though it's very much a genre show, is a very human story. Even in this heightened situation, it still comes down to people being people, and dealing with people as people. It really is about the seven people in that town.

And, there's clearly not going to be any outside help coming, anytime soon. These people are going to have to figure out some way to get out of this situation, and they're going to choose all sorts of crazy-ass strategies.