I've worked in network and cable on and off for a number of years, and you just understand what your parameters are. A lot of times, I think the best work that my team has come up with comes from having to deal with certain boundaries.

I've always read a lot of historical books and I'm a big fan of documentaries, and I've always thought of ways to do it.

One of the tricky things about running a TV show is that you just never know how good the guest stars you cast on a weekly basis, how good they're going to be in the episode. Sometimes they surprise you in good ways and sometimes they surprise you in disappointing ways.

I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the audience would want. That's my job, is to anticipate ahead of the audience.

Obviously there are different standards and practices that are allowed on cable versus network. You just have to embrace what your network is going to allow.

Nothing makes me happier than to have a smart person tell me why the show is smart, especially if I didn't intend that. I tend to be a very instinctual writer, and I don't plot shows out like, "This is my thesis and this is how I'm going to subtly sneak my thesis into this episode." I just approach it from, "We know these characters well, here are the situations that they're in, now how would they behave? What would the consequences be?" And it's always fun to see how people interpret that and dissect it afterward, and make me and the other writers seem probably smarter than we really are.

To this day, nothing makes me happier than finding a TV show I really love.