Even when you're casting, casting is always one of the weirdest subjective areas. You can get a group of people who would decide and say, "This person is a great actor and this person is less than a great actor," but there will always be somebody else who likes that person better than you based on their experience in their other films.

The first thing you do as a producer is you try to understand the director's vision in as deeply a way as you can. Sometimes, you end up with a director that has more vision or sometime they have less vision. You hope that they have more. In the case where they have more, you need to understand it in the deepest way you can.

The hard thing for me, and it took me many years to understand, the concept of Hollywood not being a meritocracy - I am a middle child, and as most middle children will tell you, that never goes away, wishing the world was fair and understanding.

It takes a number of different skill sets, I think, to try and be a good producer. You have to be very creative, but you also have to be incredibly financially minded. I jokingly say the job is kind of part cheerleader and part dictator. It is both of those things, because you have to make sure that people are doing what they need to be doing, but creatively you really need to be helping each person in every job across the crew. Cheering them on, keeping them inspired into doing their best work, and you have the director's vision in the forefront.

Somebody asked me, "When was the last time it was harder for you as a woman"? And I was like, "What time is it? Do you mean today?" I hate to say that, because it sounds so depressing, but it absolutely happens in many many ways all the time, large and small ways. But it's not like it creates new pain for me on a daily basis, it's just a pain that I accepted long ago. It's definitely harder.

The problem for me is that I just don't often come across material that speaks to me and my TV education. Before we all had DirectTV and Netflix and Amazon, there's literally 15 years where I saw nothing. Now, I get the pleasure of binge-watching, so now I feel like I'm much more in a TV state of mind, because I binge-watched so many incredible TV shows that now I'm actually a little bit more excited about working in the space.

Even when you're casting, casting is always one of the weirdest subjective areas. You can get a group of people who would decide and say, "This person is a great actor and this person is less than a great actor," but there will always be somebody else who likes that person better than you based on their experience in their other films.