So between he and I, we put together the way it should look. But then Syd Mead and Lawrence Paull [production designer] and I can draw. Because I was at art school, I can really draw and really paint and really envision. I knew the world I wanted to create, which was a combination of Hong Kong prior to any skyscrapers. I’d shot in Hong Kong before the first bank of Hong Kong went up. Hong Kong was an eastern medieval town – it was incredible. I always fitted that into New York, because in New York I spent a lot of time going in and out for advertising jaunts. New York at that point was smelly and dirty – I didn’t like it. It wasn’t until [Mayor, Michael] Bloomberg came in and really made it what it is. New York right now is fantastic – bore no relationship to New York in the 60s. But I thought New York meets Hong Kong was it. I had to make a decision as to whether the prevalent nationality would be Mexican, Hispanic, or Chinese. I went Chinese. I think it’s gonna be Mexican.

Where did the Noir element come in, because that’s what really adds the spice to the sci-fi.

You’ve got to remember, Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep was an endless book. An endless amount of story. My show is Man In The High Castle. That’s my show. So Dick’s novel… we fell out, because I carelessly said, “I couldn’t get through it.” And he was really pissed off. Now I know the family and the daughters and everything, so I think it’s all mended. But nevertheless, what I got from the book – I read about 20 pages.

What had happened was, Hampton had buried himself alive in that kind of book, and discovered it was incredibly complex. 19 stories in the first 50 pages. He’d gone for the backbone of the story, which is fundamentally, the quarry falls in love with the hunter. It was all taking place in an apartment – internalised storytelling, as [Philip K] Dick would have. And I was doing Alien, I was mixing Alien, and Michael Deeley came over to me and said, “Read this play that Hampton’s written. What do you think?” I said, “I love the writing. I love the writer.” I thought about it for almost eight months, because I didn’t want to go back and do another science fiction.

Eight months later, I found myself doing Dune, and then I thought, “What am I doing Dune for?” I think Blade Runner, that was a great thing. I went to Hollywood, to cut a long story short, and spent the next five months every day, with probably the best time I’ve had ever working with a writer. My opening premise with Hampton was, “Right, you’ve got a story that purports a humanoid, or a robot, that looks so human that you can’t tell the difference. And this person falls in love with him. I want to see what it looks like outside. I want to see what the world [looks like], and who’s doing this.”