For me, always, the big inspiration really comes from talking with my creators, my showrunners and my producers, and seeing what is their vision for their project.
Judd Apatow, together with me and Lena, we're all the showrunners of 'Girls.'
I have a lot of faith in our showrunners.
On one level, all of the characters in 'Game of Thrones' grow out of George R.R. Martin's imagination. Therefore they are his. As long as they are in the novels they are his. But the moment they step forth onto the TV screen, they become filtered through the showrunners. In a business sense, it's the same way with comics.
The hierarchy plays out in the writers room, and you, as a staff writer, need to know your place.
We've talked about a sitcom and a comedy drama. It's getting the right project and working with the right people.
The writers are the stars of every really successful sitcom.
Putting any show on television is a challenge. I've been very lucky to work with incredible showrunners on 'Smallville' and 'Lost' and 'Heroes.' I hope to bring a lot of those lessons to Marvel live television.
I really do see everybody at Marvel Television as storytellers. They might have different titles, but whether they're actors or they're showrunners or they're somebody that answers the phone, all of them are storytellers.
You know, what 'New Girl' is doing is they're bringing in really cool people. These are home-run people who aren't your typical guest-star-type people.
Television showrunners are a foolishly optimistic bunch.
Television is certainly a writers-led medium. They're the ones who are there, they're the ones that are conferencing or whatever, with directors coming and going.
I would make the movie industry more like the television industry. TV is more material driven. In TV, you can break new stars. TV can take more chances.
Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino gave me such a gift with 'Bunheads,' and to give me this gift of going on 'Gilmore Girls' was beyond. It was awesome.
TV is the place that writers want to be.
When you're talking about people like Shonda Rhimes, Vince Gilligan or Beau Willimon, you're talking to people who are notable and celebrities in their own right. People want to know how their brains work.
As a viewer of TV shows, I always like shows more when I just feel like the people in charge have a plan. You can just tell sometimes, 'Oh, there's a plan there. They have an idea for how this is going to unfold.'
I think television keeps on being a place where writers can go, and if they're successful, they can have their way, and they can have creative freedom.
Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg are fantastic producers and showrunners, and they lead a very, very positive, fun, creative environment to work in and to work with.
In TV, it's so much more about the writers because they're the ones creating the universe. The writers are the ones who know what's up.
I'm seeing more and more people of color do what I do as showrunners, and that's so great. I would love to get to the point where we don't have to talk about it anymore.
I have Margaery Tyrell's - I didn't take it, I was given it - but yes, David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] gave me Margaery Tyrell's wedding crown. So that is sitting on my bookshelf.
I can't even imagine being Matt and Ross Duffer.
Bill Prady and Chuck Lorre, the guys who run that show [Big Bang Theory], are really funny and really smart, and the cast is fantastic to work with.
TV showrunners have become known entities to people who watch television in the way that movie directors have been known to filmgoers for a long time. When I started out as a writer and producer in television, I never had the slightest expectation that fame would be part of the job.
