"I was shocked by how personally people take the idea of infidelity," says Sarah Treem of public reaction to The Affair. "People will go to the mat for it in a way that they won’t on climate change or child abuse or racism or anything."
Read THR's Cover Story Lee Daniels, Damon Lindelof, A-List Writers on Race, Ignoring Critics, an 'Empire' Axing
"You can fight, but you have to fight fair. You might be having a screaming fight at 10 in the morning, and inevitably at 2 in the afternoon you will have to call them back about something else," says Michelle King on maintaining a healthy relationship with the network.
Says Damon Lindelof of the challenge of hiring diverse writers, "If you walk down the corridors of WME, CAA, UTA, you’re not going to see a lot of black agents, and they’re the ones who [would be] sending me those scripts."
"We’ve lost some favorite characters, so it’s about trying to make sure we honor them and pay deference to how much the audience liked them and keep the world rich enough that the loss isn’t felt," King tells THR about the pressure of creating season seven of The Good Wife.
"I think you want your writers room to somehow reflect your show so that the conversations that are happening in the writers room can translate more easily to the screen," Treem says. "When we put the room of The Affair together, we specifically looked for half men, half women, and that’s important to our story."
"I’m hurt [by critics]. It’s like taking a knife and stabbing you in the heart over and over. So I’ve learned to protect myself by not reading reviews," Daniels tells THR about facing criticism. "If my publicist says you really have to read this, I’ll read it, and then I’ll find the one sentence that f—s me up."
"When Homeland started, not only were we the first show that David Nevins picked up for Showtime, but we were also the first show that Bert Salke at Fox 21 did for the studio," Gansa recalls. "So to say there was some anxiety attendant upon that first season would be an understatement."
"The most significant impact that we can have is to empower people, whether writers, producers or directors, who don’t look like us so that they can make hiring decisions," Lindelof tells THR about the issue of diversity. "The Leftovers has a very strong female voice, and I sought out that balance behind the camera."
"I don’t read reviews. I’m much more interested in what my peers have to say than a stranger’s review of it," Willimon admits. "That’s not so much because I don’t have a thick skin; I started out in the theater, and you’ve got to have a really thick skin to be in the theater, where a review really can make or break a show."