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So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

Traditionally in crime fiction, women exist as a bedroom convenience or to screw up in order that the plot may progress. I wanted no part of that.

Well, first of all, you read the script a million times. Because what the script gives you are given circumstances. Given circumstances are all the facts of your character.

What I look for in a script is the plot point and whether they're strong, obviously, or not, whether the characters are rich or not, and if I can do justice to the character or not. Some movies you look at and the script is so bad that no one can do anything with the script.

A lot of crime fiction writing is also lazy. Personality is supposed to be shown by the protagonist's taste in music, or we're told that the hero looks like the young Cary Grant. Film is the medium these writers are looking for.

I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting.

I do not choose characters because I think, 'Wow, that woman is so strong.' I chose these characters with utmost conviction because I think they were realistic enough to exist, and I really liked the scripts.

Some novels present a story form many points of view. Most movies tell only one person's side of the story. Sometime it's easy to use the strongest point of view, or find the character with the most dramatic experience. It depends on which themes the scriptwriter wants to explore.

With any project I work on - not just 'True Detective' - I don't feel the need just to play a strong woman. I don't want the audience to say, 'Oh, she was so strong.' I want to play characters that are flawed and interesting.

There is a very conservative element of crime writers that don't recognise what I do is crime fiction.