Whenever I see a cut of a film and something is gone, I don't notice it unless it obviously should have been kept.

It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there.

There's lots of different ways of writing stuff and lots of different mindsets to have, but I think when it's your own creation, it's more pleasurable because you have total control.

[The film Woman Walks Ahead] is from a long time ago. I wrote that ages ago. It looks gorgeous and Jessica [Chastain] is so good that I've got high hopes.

I spoke to Tom's [Hardy] manager and said, "While we're talking about Taboo, do you mind if I also mention this film project that I've got, which is called Locke, and I need Tom to play the lead." And we spoke about both in that meeting and in the end the deal was that I would do Taboo if he did Locke and vice versa.

In other words, when you have someone [like Ridley Scott] with that authority, then you tend to be left alone. But they were good and they're really good people, and I'm a big champion of the BBC and I think that like minds find each other and I think that FX and BBC is a perfect match.

[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.