Usually if you're the center of a show, part of your job is to host its energy.
I am the lead on NBC's 'Siberia,' and I loved that experience.
When I create a TV show, it's so that I can write it. I'm not an empire builder; my writing staff is usually a combination of two kinds of people - experts in the world the show is set in, and young writers who will not be unhappy if they're not writing scripts.
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.
I don't know much about writing a show or being a show-runner on a show, but I can only imagine that when you first cast a show and you first do a pilot, there are so many components that you're throwing into the mix and you're not sure how they're going to develop.
I'd love to host a reality show now and not be a contestant in it. I want to take a show forward.
I see myself directing, writing, doing my own TV shows and movies.
I would have loved to have been on 'The Walking Dead' longer, but it didn't happen.
I'm consistently blown away by 'Mad Men.' Having spent so much time in the writers' room, I'm cursed in that anytime I watch something, I'm always calculating what the writers are up to.
As a showrunner, you can never be a 'maybe.' When I do movies, there is a lot of, 'Maybe' and, 'Let's investigate that.' But for TV, it has to be yes or no.
I've really been very focused on 'Jessica Jones.' Our series was well on its way to being created by the time we even saw scripts from 'Daredevil,' and 'Luke Cage' didn't even have a showrunner hired then. Jeph Loeb [Marvel TV boss] is the master of the connective tissue, but each series exists in its own world.
Something I've really been wanting to do, ever since 'Six Feet Under' ended, was create my own version of this idealized writer's room as well as the ideal family.
When you're a writer on a show, your job is to write in the show runner's voice, really.
I don't want to carry a network show. I don't want to give up 10 months, working 17 hours a day, up at five in the morning.
In television, the 60-minute series, 'The Wire' and 'Mad Men' and so on, the writer is the primary creative artist.
On 'Vikings,' nobody's got an ego. Michael Hirst is just so open and so collaborative.
Television and movies just take so long. If you pitch a show or develop a project, it can be a year before your show even gets on the air, if it gets picked up.
When I was a staff writer on 'NYPD Blue,' it was truly my job to hear David Milch's voice for that show and to deliver episodes that embodied that voice.
I think, especially with this show [How to Get Away with Murder], we have Viola Davis and Pete Nowalk as the showrunner.
The stage gives you more control over your own work; in television, there's a distressing amount of communal writing. Unless it's your show, you have no control over that. You're at the mercy of whoever's running the show.
Not everybody gonna be in front of the camera forever, man. That's impossible. Don't get me wrong, I love doing that. But behind the scenes and the power is what I like. I like being in control. And maybe someday I'd be a showrunner.
I worked on a show called 'West Wing' before. I didn't work with Aaron Sorkin, but he created the show and set the tenor of the show, which was you follow the words of the script perfectly because there's a dramaturgical thing behind it.
Doing a TV show is like temporarily getting married to it.
I think the rigors of a TV schedule are brutal and 'Six Feet Under' wasn't a network schedule. We did 13 shows, we didn't do 22. I don't know how people do that. I really don't. I mean the shows are shorter, but wow, it's quite a discipline.
I've read many great samples, both of existing shows I liked and original pilots, and definitely hired the writers - or, at least, tried to!
