It's great that the story [Allied] is set in the '40s because the '40s feel to it is completely appropriate.

Suddenly, after years of television being the poor relation and film being everything, it now feels like film is a conjuring trick. It's like, "Oh, my god, how are you going to do that in 90 minutes, as opposed to eight hours?! I've got so little time to do this!" It becomes an art form, in itself. Doing both helps you do each one.

[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.

[Allied] meant to be a film that's a bit different. It's roots are in the '40s and '50s, and that sort of filmmaking style.

The story of James Delaney is also someone who very deliberately presents himself as an individual and plays nations against each other, plays the East India against the Crown, all of those sort of overwhelming concepts that ran the world at the time.

With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.

I find the best way to make things real is to just put two characters into a space and let them talk to each other in the way that they would talk to each other, and then see what they would say. I know it sounds weird, but that leads the plot and takes you in another direction.