Quote

I feel like if a film is well-written, then the character's arc is complete. There really is very little room to expand on that afterwards.

When you're making a television show, it's about the story and arc of the show rather than any particular episode or director.

In a play, you know where you start and end and all the stops you have to do, but in television, you can't construct this carefully planned out arc for your character. You often get a script and you're shooting it two days later, and you don't know what's going to happen next. It's one of the harder things that I've done.

It's a whole other way of working when you work in films: You know exactly the arc of your character.

With a series, keeping the quality high and writing incredibly fast, that's the first lesson you learn. You can't be real precious. When you're doing a feature film, you have 2 1/2 months; you sort of take your time. It's a different animal.

It is quite different, but I love doing a series because you get to live with a character for a much longer amount of time. And the other aspect of it is that you have a steady job.

Every film you're commissioned to write is all about an arc; usually, the arc is that the world creates a change in the character, usually for the better. To not have an arc, the messages and ideas in the film became more prominent.

One of the great things about a TV series is that it's different to a movie - in a movie you obviously know the beginning, the middle and the end of what you're going to do. With a TV series it's unfolding, and you're discovering with every episode.

No matter how much I plan the overall arc of the character, you get there day one on the film and you shooting certain scenes first, and it goes completely different to anything you ever thought of, and then it's done.

Doing a truncated series is like doing a long movie, which allows for a certain artistic freedom. After just 12 episodes, you can take a breather and do other things for your career.