The experience you're going to take the audience on is as important as the story you're trying to tell. And that experience needs to excite me so much that I am desperate to share it.
— Sam Esmail
People thought I looked weird, that I talked weird.
I'm Egyptian, and my parents stupidly decided to move us down to South Carolina when I was five, which was pretty brutal.
That's what I did growing up. Other than being on the computer, I was watching TV and movies. I make no apologies.
I don't cover my scenes. We approach it visually. Sometimes we go out of our way to do awkward blocking so that we can tell whatever the emotional heartbeat is of that scene in the most interesting way possible.
I love when a protagonist and antagonist can find common ground.
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.
I've lived a very isolated life.
I think technology gives the illusion that you are connecting with people, social media particularly.
'Fight Club' is great in its spirit of anti-establishment.
I've always been fascinated by this idea of who we are versus who we want to be.
I'm not a huge fan of very plotty shows. I'm much more of a fan of character-driven stories.
Aren't all people flawed?
When I first created the world of 'Mr. Robot,' I thought it would be a niche television series with a small, cult following.
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.
We frame things in an off-kilter way because it's unsettling. In the 'Mr. Robot' world, that's the norm, and it's the norm for the point of view that we're looking for, which is Elliot's. With our compositions and our visual language and camera movements, it's important to always evoke that unsettling feeling underneath every scene.
I always suspend logic for emotion. If it feels real, or it feels like what I'm going for, we should abandon reality a little bit and go for that. I'm not a documentarian. We're not trying to shoot things for naturalism.
I'm controlling over anything I create. I'm very precious about it.
I remember growing up in suburban New Jersey, and all the computer stores were like, 'Motherboard Mayhem' and all these cheesy names.
I'm not in the business of adapting things that are popular for the sake of just getting it on the screen. I think there has to be a vital reason.
I'm a film nerd.
I'm not here to say that I want to change the TV industry.
'Mr. Robot' is more directly about technology, and 'Homecoming' deals more with the pharmaceutical industry, but I think they're all part and parcel of this growing sense that things are happening behind the scenes at our expense, and we're not aware of it.
I did not love going out to parties or even get-togethers, really - I went to the movies, which, if you think about it, is an isolating experience anyway - and this was because I had anxiety about interacting with people.
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.
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.
'Taxi Driver' is one of those films that is groundbreaking in how much you're inside this character's head. It uses voice-over in a revolutionary way where the audience is invited as a co-conspirator to the whole story line.
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.
I never try and tune anything out. I think that's a mistake. You want to bring all the honest stuff that's going on inside you into your work. Otherwise, you're keeping a lot of authenticity out.
When you don't have a main character that's flawed, I don't know how you relate to that person.
Before we started shooting 'Homecoming,' we were in the writer's room for 'Mr. Robot.' I was also editing Season 3 of 'Mr. Robot' while I was prepping for the 'Homecoming' shoot. So yeah, it's a lot of hats.
There are some critics that will just write provocative stuff to get attention, but I would say most of the time that's not the case.
I know when it comes to TV, the writer is king, but to me, the filmmaker is king.
I'm not a fan of these very cutty, handheld-y kind of films or TV shows, where a cut is just every half second or every two seconds, where you're desensitized to it. To me, a cut should say something and be impactful.
I don't want to watch a show or a movie about the guy who doesn't have any problems, who is sort of a goodie two shoes and just does everything morally right, because that's not the person I relate to. That's not who I am. That's not what anyone is.
My parents were very strict Muslims, and they weren't shy about showing it.
Movies and television show build on top of each other, succeed one another. In a large way, in terms of filmmaking aesthetics, they evolve because they can't help but be a consequence of all the movies and TV shows that came before it.
I rip off of every movie and TV show I've ever seen in my life.
For shows that are hyper-serialized, it just seems to make more sense to follow a feature film model than follow a television model, which was set up more for a procedural type of show.
I did have friends who have suffered from schizophrenia and mild dissociative identity disorder, as well as more extreme cases of social anxiety disorder.
I have tremendous social anxiety.
If your loved ones are far away, and they're uploading pictures, you feel like that's enough: these loose strands through email, through social media, are going to supply this connection you have with that person. And I think that's keeping us isolated and lonely in a way that's very dangerous because we're unaware of it.
'Pi' was one of my favorite films growing up because I thought it employed paranoia and voice-over, and also because it used this unreliable narrator in a very fascinating way.
Looking back at 'Taxi Driver' or, really, any of the Martin Scorsese films, he really filmed New York City in a way that I saw New York City.
Any time I approach a scene, it's not just what's on the page - it's how the camera's going to show or not show what's on the page. It's which character are we going to align with and what music is going to be playing.
I could watch 'There Will Be Blood' all day long, and Daniel Plainview is a terrible person - but he's still compelling to watch. That's what makes me want to engage and see what happens next.
I don't mind Twitter. I think it's a lot of nonsense, but at least, to me, Twitter is just more of a public forum to have conversation.
This is the great thing about TV is that when you discover certain strengths in an actor, you can then begin to exploit them in really fun ways.
I used to want to be a critic. I think it's an awesome job. You get to watch all this stuff and then write about it and analyze it and give insight into it. That's an amazing job. I was terrible at it, though.
It's strange not to allow the actor some input and breathing room into what was written on the page - it is their job to make it come alive.
