It was great to essentially have two protagonists where you're sympathies could go back and forth between the two of them, throughout the season.

I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another...

In television, the creator is really the voice...

Even when a pilot goes, you shoot it in March or April, and then you have to rush it through post-production by May. If they greenlight it, then you go and there's no time to think about it. And then, you've gotta start shooting in July, so you're off to the races.

Whether it's movies or television that I've directed, or characters that I've played, I'm just always fascinated by the moral ambiguity inherent in life.

You can say the president's private life takes up so much of his time that he doesn't focus on his job, so therefore he's terrible. But in my imagination, the 23 hours of the day that we don't experience, he's very hard at work. He's quite an effective and successful president - in my narcissistic imagination.

I think I've inherited a kind ofwillfulness, a kind of quiet willfulness that I'll just hang in there with something until it happens.