Steven Knight
I like to create a character where you believe, deep down, that they don't really care if they live or die. That's very liberating for the character because, if the character is prepared to die, then they can do anything. It's impossible to stop them.Collection: Believe
When you're watching, I find two things happen. You either watch a film and it's really good and then you think, "Why can't I do that?" Or you watch a film and it's not good, and you think, "Why am I doing this?" So either way, it feels like being at work.Collection: Thinking
No screenplay is possible, unless you get some attachment from somebody who's going to get it made.Collection: Attachment
It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there.Collection: People
The plan is that there would be three seasons [in Taboo], and, as with Peaky Blinders, I have had a destination in mind from the beginning, because I think it helps as a writer. The destination in mind is that James Keziah Delaney sets foot on Nootka Sound. But that's a long way off.Collection: Thinking
True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely.Collection: Stories
You work, especially in the movie business more than in TV, but you have an environment where people feel obliged to have an input because that's what they do, and I think sometimes it can clutter things up and make things more problematic.Collection: Thinking
Sometimes you take something because it's an offer and it's big and it's good money and you have to absolutely respect that process, because it's not easier.Collection: Sometimes
There's more to come. Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders] is coming soon. But I'm proud of making my hometown, which is considered to be completely unfashionable, slightly fashionable. People actually know where it is now.Collection: People
I think people are drawn to characters that break the rules. I think there is something about a good person doing bad things for what they consider to be a good reason. Then the battle is on to almost prove to the audience that it's justified. How far can you go with that? How far can that character go before people won't accept it? Trying to walk to edge of that line is a challenge.Collection: Character
There's lots of different ways of writing stuff and lots of different mindsets to have, but I think when it's your own creation, it's more pleasurable because you have total control.Collection: Writing
[Taboo] has been exactly the same as working with the BBC in that creatively they do that precious thing which is to only make a comment when a comment needs to be made.Collection: Needs
I always thought it would never happen. And then, it became possible. In between commissions, I wrote it as an original screenplay [Allied].Collection: Screenplays
The story [of Allied] stayed with me, like a stray dog outside the office, waiting.Collection: Dog
I've realized that the only thing I'm interested in is the performance. If the performance is right, then I'm happy. You offer up the dialogue and then the performance comes around.Collection: Dialogue
I think certain periods of history don't get dealt with because I think historians, and it's their job, but they look back and look for patterns. They look for sequences and they look for reasons, and certain periods of history don't fit with the general pattern of 1500 to the 20th century, during which there's the creation of the United States. At this time of 1814, two nations who would eventually become close allies were at war with each other, so it doesn't quite fit.Collection: Jobs
I spoke to Tom's [Hardy] manager and said, "While we're talking about Taboo, do you mind if I also mention this film project that I've got, which is called Locke, and I need Tom to play the lead." And we spoke about both in that meeting and in the end the deal was that I would do Taboo if he did Locke and vice versa.Collection: Talking
Whenever I see a cut of a film and something is gone, I don't notice it unless it obviously should have been kept.Collection: Cutting
I was 21, when I heard the story that inspired this [thriller Allied], and I wasn't even a screenwriter then.Collection: Stories
I didn't direct [the Taboo episodes]. I wrote all of them.Collection: Episodes
I think that it's not a bad thing to not be too versed in the vocabulary of cinema, because you start to think that certain things are allowed and not allowed.Collection: Thinking
I relish the eight-hour format of a single season because it gives you time to do that.Collection: Eight
[The Girl in the Spider's Web] can't be anything other than a sequel, but a couple of books have been skipped, so it is different, in that sense. It's really taking a very strong central character and thinking, how do you execute this? It's quite different.Collection: Girl
You know that when you suggest something on the page, it's going to be there, plus more. It's a great luxury to know that you don't have to push it. You just lay it out, and it will be there.Collection: Luxury
It's such a gift when you know who you're writing for and you know that that actor is capable of so much that you can relax a bit.Collection: Writing
Expect the unexpected, is what I'd say about Taboo. It's different. I don't think you've seen anything like it. It's getting incredible responses, so fingers crossed.Collection: Thinking
There were three options [in Allied], which were for [Bred Pitt] to shoot [Marion Cotillard], for them to escape, or for her to pull the trigger, which is a heroic act to spare him. When I was thinking about how it would end, a long time ago, I think I tried each of them to see, but two of them did not work.Collection: Thinking
What I wanted to do [in Allied] was get two characters who fall in love for real, across the barricade, and then it transcends the war.Collection: Falling In Love
I'm always interested in characters who are closed down, but who open up when they choose to, rather than when they're obliged to. I think that's a very appealing thing, for an audience and just in life. I like the idea that something will say nothing, and then get straight to the point. That feels like how your heroes should be.Collection: Hero
With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.Collection: Writing
I don't think that jealousy and love and hate and anger and all those things have changed in the past 200 years - people just express themselves differently.Collection: Hate
I wanted to take a damaged individual in a damaged society with damaged relationships between nations and take a look at how this individual survives amongst them, and that for me as a writer is the connection that you needed to get inside the skin of the main character and wonder how he's going to cope with all this.Collection: Character
I'm very, very excited because I'm just completing Episode 6 of Series 4 [of Peaky Blinders], which again I think is the best yet. And I'm loving it and it's not like work, it's not like a labor, I love doing it, and the boys are coming back and they're loving the scripts.Collection: Boys
What happened was I was invited to meet Tom [Hardy] to discuss a project that he had in his mind about an adventurer who returns to England from Africa with secrets and with a history, and the original idea was set some 80 years later than it is now. But in the conversation I really took to the idea and I'd wanted for a while to set something in 1830 and 1840 in London, so it struck a chord.Collection: Years
I wouldn't put myself in that bracket, but it's one of those things. I think what helps is that we [with Tom Hardey] don't socialize, we don't really know each other, we purely work together.Collection: Thinking
I think that helps because there has been no formality of friendship, the politeness of friendship, so we can just work directly on the work that's ahead of us [with Tom Hardey].Collection: Thinking
I am someone who thinks that if you've got an actor like that who wants to perform your work, then you should do it, and hopefully Tom [Hardey] likes to do the work that I do, so long may it continue.Collection: Thinking
It has to be an actress like Marion Cotillard [in Allied] because there are so many levels to it. It's set in the Second World War, when lots of people were doing things that, outside of a war, you wouldn't do, like killing and dropping bombs. She's doing things that one wouldn't approve of, but it's war.Collection: War
It's great that the story [Allied] is set in the '40s because the '40s feel to it is completely appropriate.Collection: Stories
When Brad [Pitt] responded [to Allied], suddenly what was impossible became possible, which was great. But along the way, whenever I told the story, it had an affect on people. At its core, this was an effective story.Collection: People
[Allied] meant to be a film that's a bit different. It's roots are in the '40s and '50s, and that sort of filmmaking style.Collection: Roots
Just the idea that someone is married and they've got a kid, and he reports for work one morning and his boss says, "You're wife is a spy. Shoot her." In the real story, he just went back and did it, which would have been a short film. Therefore, I had to spend some time exploring what you would do.Collection: Morning
[Allied] got the attention of (director) Bob Zemeckis and Marion Cotillard. I'm glad I waited. If it had been made 15 years before, who knows how it would have looked, but it's got the best possible cast, director and everything. It's been fantastic. It was worth waiting.Collection: Years
The time came where I was able to write an original screenplay [Allied], and it would be read and noticed. I had a meeting with Brad [Pitt], just around the time that he was making World War Z. I basically told him the story and said, "This is what I want to do," and he really responded, so that helped me put the thing together and write it.Collection: War
Sometimes if you're a director, you want to believe that you're great and capable at all aspects - the technical side, the lights, everything - but I'm not.Collection: Believe
I love cooking and kitchens.It's just a great world, and I wanted to explore it. You see the façade, the outside, the public part, and then you just walk through one door marked "Staff Only" and you're in a different universe.Collection: Different Universes
If you've read something brilliant, it's good. It's good to look out the window and see what's going on in the world.Collection: Looks
I'm very bad at watching anything. I'm bad at going to theaters; I can't watch my own stuff; I watch a lot of sports.Collection: Sports
When I was probably about 10 or 11, and I found it was simply something I could do. When you're at school and you do something and you get praised for it, you think, "Oh, right, well I'll do that." From then on, I always thought I'd be a writer. I thought novels at first, and then I sort of naturally drifted into TV.Collection: School
[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.Collection: War