We read novels. We read hundreds of pages of words, when the story is good because we're willing to stay there. I hope the story is good. I'm going into this venture thinking that the audience is really smart and really wants to hear all the nuances of what we're saying.

I think it is the hardest thing in the world. I'm endlessly intrigued by what human nature is capable of, both the horrible things we are capable of and also the heroic things. I'm really interested in exploring that side of human nature.

Because we spent so much time in the writer's room, not even talking about where it goes, but just who the people are in our world, we could find all those unexpected moments and twists and turns that we didn't even see ourselves.

But, for the role of Sarah Linden, we saw everybody. Everybody wanted this role. Every female actor in town really wanted to play a real woman and be in this drama. It was incredible that all these women were coming in. And then, Mireille [Enos] walked in the door and she was reading the lines that I had written, and I saw her in that field. I was like, "Wow, she's the one."

I've always been kind of drawn to the extremities of human nature. I wrote my first screenplay when I was 16. The initial idea was a friendship between two prostitutes, and I spent time with a vice squad guy in Cincinnati who brought me to a brothel and gave me the rundown on how street prostitution works.

The most surprising thing to me is what an incredibly intense effort it's been to create a world from the ground up. I had run a show that had already existed and had been created by the show-runner, Meredith [Stiehm]. It's a very different experience to come in at ground zero and meet people and assemble the cast and crew. As a group and as a family, we're creating this world.

If I had multiple lives, I'd like to do many things, including being a homicide investigator. I'm not brave enough to chase people and draw down on them. Having spent time with that, it can be an incredibly terrifying job.