It's very rare that people are exactly who they appear to be. Venice has a lot of that too, but the face of it is quite beautiful, interesting, and textured.

Everything's not black and white. We choose to make bad decisions or not. I wanted to explore that and shine a light on it. Chip is trying to be a better person and lead a better life. His methods are just super flawed.

But as a result of that, there was, once the show ended, there was this talk for sort of four, five months about what was going to happen, and if we were going to move to Showtime, and if we were going to be bought by ABC or whatever.

Well, we were never coming back to Fox... that was clear.

I often get, 'Oh, you always play the asshole.' An asshole is somebody who knows that they're doing it, but continues to behave a certain way. The one sort of common thread to me has always been that these are imperfect people.

The show had run its course on the Fox network.

I remember asking my dad, "Why didn't you ever move to the States? You probably could have made a lot more money." My dad said, "Because I have an obligation to give back." I always admired him for that.