If you're in a popular TV show, you can attract attention, and I like to help focus that on stories that deserve to be told - which is what politicians do. But I would lose my autonomy, and to get things done I would have to compromise and get into the weeds of policy. I don't know if I'm smart enough.

If you're playing with the best, you just rise up to that level

I'm a moderate Democrat. I've always been fascinated and maddened by the way things get done in our system, which as an ideal is so extraordinary, but the way it actually works can be mind-boggling.

I think the problem with polemics is that it's general and it's lazy. When you say, "This is bad," that's a general thing. We're more interested in asking the question.

The network was fantastic, but you get a lot of anxiety with any production. It was very helpful to have both of us because we could back each other up. As a creator, a director and a filmmaker, you often get assaulted and you lose perspective because you have all of this pressure. It was so nice to call him and say, "What do you think?"

My mother's whole family had been from the theater, really. Because I grew up in Hollywood, I wasn't that interested in Hollywood. But the New York theater was completely exotic and fabulous to me.

My parents kept us sheltered from this world of Hollywood. I don't have any great memories of bouncing on Cary Grant's knee or something like that