East India Company were a huge multinational that had the added impetus that they felt they were spreading Christian civilization around the world - so they were pretty free to do anything they wanted.

What I wanted to do [in Allied] was get two characters who fall in love for real, across the barricade, and then it transcends the war.

With FX in particular, they've been fantastic and were really hands off. I mean, it helps that you've got Ridley Scott on your side.

A creative person can suddenly realize it's not 90 minutes. They haven't got to do three acts, they haven't got to do the arc, but they can do other things. I think just as novellas turned into novels, I think that television series can begin to have that depth.

East India Company weren't an evil organization that went around deliberately oppressing people, but they were driven by profit, and how familiar is that now?

I wouldn't put myself in that bracket, but it's one of those things. I think what helps is that we [with Tom Hardey] don't socialize, we don't really know each other, we purely work together.

James Delaney as an individual is sort of like a grain of sand in an oyster who is irritating all of them. But for me he's a creature of the time, like the industrialists who started the Industrial Revolution who extricated themselves from their class and their background