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.

I'm perfectly happy to color within the network lines when I have to.

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 was never that kid who grew up in New York and was always at the arthouse watching important films. I was the kid who grew up in the Midwest where there weren't any art films, and I watched TV. And that was really the medium that affected me and that I fell in love with.

TV is just such a fast-moving medium that you do what you can do, and what you can't do, you don't worry about too much.

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 think the bar is higher these days in terms of audience expectations of authenticity.