Show Creator Quotes

The Internet community started forming right when 'Buffy' started airing, and the notion of a show creator being anything other than a name people recognize on the screen was completely new.

Television used to be made much more in a vacuum; the only feedback the audience had for a long time was in a Nielsen number that would arrive sometime after the show had been broadcast. And now, people are just completely engaged on so many levels, and I think that you have to find a way as a show creator to follow your own compass.

I am so grateful and honored to be nominated. Working on Grey's Anatomy for the past few seasons has been a blessing and I have loved developing the character, Adele. I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to work with Shonda Rhimes and I want to thank her for keeping my character alive for all of these seasons.

Actually, if I had to do it over [leaving the show the West Wing], I'd do the same thing, because lost in the shuffle of it is that Aaron [Sorkin] left the same year I did. And I would not have wanted to be on The West Wing with somebody else writing it.

In TV, writers generally are the show runners, and they have enormous control over everything. In feature films, very often the writer will turn in a script and never be heard from again.

I've always said at the beginning of every single season of the show when I was running the show in the writers' room, "This is the last season, so let's smoke 'em if we've got 'em."

'Arrested Development' is great; Mitch Hurwitz is great. Plus, it's the one show I've ever had where, on the small parts, he just let me cast people.

I have a show called 'First Gen' that David Oyelowo is executive producing.

Just to clarify the division of labor on the show, I write the show and Alan [Poul] does everything else.

Michael Price is the showrunner so nobody works harder than him.

The "executive producer" title either means that you're the person who created, or co-created, the show, or you're the person who's in charge of day-to-day operations. Whereas "producer" is often just a writing credit.

I do want to do TV, but I'm looking to be a creator, writer, and producer, and perhaps I could be a recurring character. Do 10 shows a year, something like that.

Showrunning is a thing where you have to work with tons of different people. You have to schmooze people, you have to talk to network people. I don't want to do any of that.

My plan was to go to New York and do some theatre, and then I got the script for 'Psych.' I was like, 'Ahh - just as I thought I was out, you pulled me back in!' I had a great meeting with the show creator and we laid out the parameters to make the show work: what I would do, what he would let me do.

When the creator of the show is gone, the actors end up being the people who have been there the longest.

It was terrifying when Aaron Sorkin announced that he was leaving West Wing, he and Tommy Schlamme. We felt like our parents were abandoning us. It was a tremendously sad day and I'm sure I will never understand exactly all the reasons why that happened.

As soon as I knew we were going to be doing tribute episodes, and as soon as I knew the landscape of 'Psych' allowed us to do homages, the show creator and I both had respective dreams. His was a musical episode, and mine was a 'Twin Peaks' episode.

I think that, as a show creator, you have to be very careful about what messages you're putting out into the world. That is a not always popular thing to suggest, because it feels very Tipper Gore-y, perhaps.

I think it's amazing to have one writer write every episode of a series. It's very rare, I think. You get a voice that continues.

The really cool challenge of '24' was learning on camera how to be a dramatic actress. The biggest difficulty was the industry side of things. I was very lucky that I had Joel Surnow, one of the creators of '24,' in my corner. Early on, the Fox executives couldn't believe that I was on the show.

Basicly I'm in charge of all creative aspects of the show.