I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican or a conservative, the election of Trump is a national tragedy for multiple reasons. It will go down as one of the worst tragedies in American history. But he's not a dictator. This happened because we either allowed it or voted for it.Collection: History
I was a nerd, growing up, I was really into computers and technology, and most of my friends were basically in that world as well.Collection: Computers
It's not necessarily bad that you have angst or you have anger - it's what you do with it, how you interpret it into something profoundly moving.Collection: Anger
That's what I did growing up. Other than being on the computer, I was watching TV and movies. I make no apologies.Collection: Movies
I took Pascal, and I was terrible. And then, when I went to NYU, I minored in computer science. I just couldn't code. I just didn't have the patience for it.Collection: Patience
The story of 'Mr. Robot' is really about this guy who's lonely - who's alone and feels so disconnected from the world.Collection: Alone
What resonates with me whenever I watch a great movie or TV show is the balance of inevitability and unpredictability. And it's a very delicate balance.
I think people are more than their heritage or their skin colour or their name or how they grew up.
Sound design is always critical, especially when you're doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.
I have a brilliant sound design team who's been working with me since 'Mr. Robot,' and one of the things we always think about - and it's also something we think about with cinematography - is how we get inside the characters' heads and how do we place the audience where we want them to be or how we want them to feel at any given moment.
I'm a huge fan of 'The Watch,' and I've also been on a few times. It's Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan's show on The Ringer. It's just a great podcast about television.
I never let the technical stuff get in the way of the storytelling.
The 2016 election, I'm sure, wasn't the first one to be hacked; it was just the first one that was made public.
When events like the Sony Hack or the news of the Russian hack of our election, we're not shocked by such events, but they are troubling.
A lot of unexpected things do happen on 'Mr. Robot.'
I don't think it's political to dislike Trump. I don't think it's controversial to say he's a bad president. He's clearly a bad president. He's clearly not equipped to do the job.
When I started thinking about 'Mr. Robot,' I thought about it as a movie, and I thought about the complete arc, and that is the one story I'm going to tell.
I love voiceover. I never understood this idea that it was lazy. Well, yes, there are those movies or TV shows that use it as just a way to get out exposition. But you know what? That's just bad writing.
I use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.
Do I want a character who just has the best motives and the best intentions, zero flaws, and is doing things for the right reasons? No!
I went to NYU undergrad, then went to AFI for grad school.
I went to film school to direct.
It's weird; my fascination with tech was kind of combined with the fact that my parents would never pay for anything. It got me more involved because I would have to find clever ways to get things for free.
Typically, whenever you're envisioning how you're going to shoot something, you have a location or a set that you're going to build, and it's going to be built to specifications.
With some actors, if I have upward of 10 notes, I don't want to give them all 10 notes and overwhelm them. I usually parse them out three or four at a time.
On 'Mr. Robot,' because I run the writers' room and know every decision behind every line of dialogue, I'm able to be nimble and adapt with the scripts and the moments. I never have to question what I'm doing as I'm directing the actors or going through the scenes.
Tone is very important to me.
With acting, a lot of it has to come from that real, honest place.
Even great actors who transform who they are still go to a really honest place; I think that's sort of that special skill that actors have.
I think I was told numerous times in the industry that nobody wants to watch a guy on a keyboard.
You don't even know if the person you're communicating with online is actually that person. And your persona on your social media - your Facebook or Twitter - may not be the person you are in real life. So then, who is the real person? Is it somewhere in between?
I was anti-conformist.
Reality, in general, in my opinion, has gotten blurred.
Music is everything to me. It's the heart and soul of a movie or TV show to me because it can be such an injection of tone, and I think tone is everything to a story.
I've always said that the first season was the first act of my feature, so this is what I meant. I wanted the story of 'Mr. Robot' to be Elliot actually accomplishing his goal, setting the world into chaos. What would happen to society if something like this occurred where, basically, if the consumer-debt industry were to be erased?
I absolutely don't deny that I was inspired by 'Fight Club,' among many other television shows and films. I completely not only acknowledge it, I own it and love to nod to them as much as possible.
With TV season structures - and I'm a huge TV watcher - you look at shows like 'Breaking Bad,' which is my favorite show of all time, and 'The Sopranos,' which is pretty high up there as well, and there was that thing where, every season, Walter White would go up a level, but there would be a new bad.
I think there is more cohesion when you have one director on set.
I'm not saying I'm a control freak, though I'll admit that I am at times.
The fact you can manipulate people because you can hack them and learn everything about their personal lives - that's an immense amount of power.
If you think about it, just the psychology of the superhero is, 'Because I can, I should protect people, and I should put bad guys away, and I should defend society.' But you're forming your own justice. There's no judge and jury here: you are it. That, in and of itself, is a very complicated way of looking at morality.
I'm very protective of my online life, and I try and take as many security measures.
I never look at twists as a way to trick the audience. Obviously, I think a good story has surprises and unexpected turns, and you always want to do that with an audience. But it has nothing to do with conning them or making them believe so strongly in one thing and then kind of going the other way.
B. D. Wong is one of my favorite actors.
Girls rejected me a lot.
My parents were very strict Muslims, and they weren't shy about showing it.
I'm Egyptian, and my parents stupidly decided to move us down to South Carolina when I was five, which was pretty brutal.
I used to hold Stanley Kubrick film festivals at my house in high school. These are not cool things.
In a weird way, I never wanted - I don't consider myself a very good writer. I consider myself okay; I don't consider myself great. There's Woody Allen and Aaron Sorkin. There's Quentin Tarantino. I'm not ever gonna be on that level. But I do consider myself a good filmmaker.
'Fight Club' is great in its spirit of anti-establishment.