JD, Hard Harry…

Yeah, those specifically almost seem like a younger version of the Mr Robot character. Maybe subconsciously I was kind of drawing from that. The other thing I always say is that I probably rip off every movie and TV show I’ve ever watched, so maybe I literally cast Christian Slater in that same character, I don’t know [laughs].

He must love you, for having finally written something that he can be brilliant in in 2015.

I think he’s awesome and I love him. It’s weird, he is kind of grateful and he thanks me all the time, and I’m thinking to myself, “You’re Christian Slater! You shouldn’t be thanking me, I should be thanking you, you’re awesome!”

Has he ever thought about directing an episode of Mr Robot? Because he did one of his old series, Breaking In, I saw.

I know, he did. Yeah, we’ve definitely talked about it. The weird thing is, I’m so specific when it comes to the vision of the show that I just wouldn’t wish that upon anyone. The guest directors definitely had to be very patient with me because, you know, you’ve seen the show, it’s very, very specific and it’s very stylised and it’s just hard to keep that kind of aesthetic cohesive throughout the whole season and allow guest directors to kind of do their thing at the same time. It’s a hard thing to negotiate.

You think maybe the friendship wouldn’t necessarily survive that working relationship then?

[Laughs] I don’t know. I wouldn’t threaten it with it, let’s just put it that way.

As this is your debut on television—which feels sort of odd because the show seemed to come out of the gates very self-assured—is there a sense in that you were freed up because you didn’t come into it with tons of baggage of how things are done in TV?

Yeah. A little bit of the uniqueness I think people responded to on the show was my ignorance. I mean, I just didn’t know to do it any other way and oddly enough, or luckily enough, USA Network sort of let me do it my own thing.

Aren’t you being a bit overly humble there, talking about ignorance? I also read somewhere you also said that without Rami Malek as Elliot, the show would have been, and I quote, “hokey as shit”.

Yes.

That’s generous of you, isn’t it, to say that it all rests on his performance?

Well, look. I sat through maybe a hundred guys doing that audition for Elliot. The character’s incredibly narcissistic and didactic and it really took someone special to put some humanity into that. Honestly, I was really concerned during the audition process because it wasn’t really working, and we were seeing great actors, so it wasn’t their fault, and I just thought maybe the script was terrible. I mean, I was really concerned, I didn’t know what to do and then finally Rami comes in and he just blows me away and he really elevated the material, I have to say.

Is that what you think his performance brings then, humanity?

Yeah. You know, to play a guy who’s socially awkward and socially anxious yet incredibly narcissistic and rants and is angry and tortured, that could easily, easily be a grating experience, to watch a character like that.

It has been elsewhere.

Absolutely, and so there’s that fine line, and if you don’t do that right, no-one—including myself—is going to want to watch that show. So what Rami did, not only did he play all those elements to a T authentically, he brought vulnerability to it, he brought emotion to it, he brought just warmth. I never even pictured the character as being warm at all, so that was a whole other dimension. That was the thing that I was missing, I would say, that Rami brought to it that would have been terrible if he hadn’t.

You mention the precise visual style of the show. I think it was Tod Campbell, your DP, who said that in his interview for the job, his aim was that it should be a reference point for other shows rather than the other way around, and that’s what got him the job. Is that something you’ve seen yet, or is it too early to say?

I think that’s way too early, right?

Let’s talk about voiceovers then. You could say this show has restored their reputation somewhat, before Mr Robot, there was a sense that people thought voiceover equals lazy storytelling.

I really hate that. I was told that in my screenwriting classes back in college and I think that’s so terrible. I mean, I grew up with Taxi Driver, Clockwork Orange… It’s not as if I’ve invented the use of voiceover! I just borrowed it from other movies and films. I think it gives you an intimate relationship between your character and the audience that you just cannot get with dialogue between two actors in a scene, it’s just impossible. Clearly, it has been used poorly—I’m not debating that—but that doesn’t mean that the tool itself is a bad way to go. I hope that future writers and filmmakers will keep using it.

We’ll have to wait til next year to see what kind of imitation arises, because that is how television works.

We’ll see. You have those cycles.

Maybe every network’s going to want their own Mr Robot.

You think so? Interesting. So you think we’ll see more hacker shows?

Maybe the long-awaited Hackers TV series…

Ha!

Mad Men is such a great show…

I love Mad Men.

So tell us what it feels like to hear someone like [Mad Men showrunner] Matthew Weiner praise Mr Robot.

Which I still don’t believe, by the way! Everyone keeps telling me that they heard him say that at the TCAs. I guess now, I do believe it because I did read the Vanity Fair article. It’s just so weird to me, because to me, he’s a giant in television.

The Sopranos, too.

Yes. And Mad Men is beyond brilliant and the fact that he’s a fan of the show still hasn’t settled in for me. That’s such a huge compliment. I don’t know if I can take it in just yet.

What does it mean when people like him tell you they’re fans? There’s also been Damon Lindelof, Steven Soderbergh…

Honestly, you almost can’t take it in, because then you’re just going to get a big ego and you’re going to screw everything up, and so I kind of just ignore it and I just remember who I was when I started Mr Robot, because we’re about to go into season two and that’s sort of the clarity I think you need to just keep chugging along. The temptation is always ‘oh, now I’ve got to do what I did bigger and better and badder’, and I’m trying not to do that. I’m trying to say ‘no, I’ve got to stick to the plan, stick to what we originally planned on from the get-go’. I kind of have to ignore it.

So, as Mr Robot started life as a feature film idea, am I right in thinking season two equates to act two of the movie?

Yeah.

Then the plan is that if you get to seasons three, four, and five, they’re…

The way I look at it, act two of a feature is always the longest act, so I kind of think season two and half of three is going to be the first half of act two, then maybe the end of three and four will be the second half of act two, then maybe five is act three.

Have you had any commitment from the USA Network on that front?

Of all five seasons? [Laughs] I wish! No, we have not had any… I mean, they know the plan. In fact, I get the opposite sometimes. They keep slipping in things like ‘we could go seven, eight seasons with this’ and I keep having to say no [laughs] we’re not doing that! I mean, not doing it with me. I keep reminding them that I only want to go four or five. For them it’s strange that a showrunner is asking for fewer seasons instead of more, but I don’t believe in dragging things out.

Again, we’ve seen it happen elsewhere on other shows we love.

Yeah, yeah.

You were a big Lost fan, I understand?

Huge Lost fan [makes the connection, laughs]! Yes, yes I was a big Lost fan [laughs]

Moving on swiftly.

[Etiquette breach warning: the laws of British reserve and self-deprecation demand that we ask you to please avert your eyes for this next bit, in which Mr Esmail says nice things about Den Of Geek.]

I love the website, by the way.

Do you?

Yeah. You guys reviewed our show?

Yes, we did.

I read a lot of your reviews. You guys are awesome. Specifically I remember the one article about… didn’t you guys write something about…

Fight Club?

Yeah! That was a great article. And it actually said everything… every time I got asked a question ‘Are you a rip-off of Fight Club? I kind of wanted to tell them ‘Read this article’, because that was exactly how I felt about the whole inspiration.

That’s really gratifying, thanks. I didn’t really want to bring Fight Club up because you’ve probably had to answer to that a lot since the season aired. Like, blah, it’s just Fight Club…

Yeah, I do. Did you write that?

I did write it.

Oh my God, that was an awesome article! I got to say, awesome article and it really is true to what I feel about using Fight Club as my inspiration. The way you say, I think you described it—I mean you said it so well, I’m probably going to butcher it right now—but I think you said “spiritual successor” right?

Yeah.

That, to me, is exactly on point to how I feel about it. Because if people want to accuse me of being derivative of Fight Club, that’s totally fine, I’m willing to take that because clearly we were heavily inspired by it, and obviously we nod to it using the Pixies song [Where Is My Mind] at the end of episode nine. I totally accept that challenge, but for me, I feel more like the way you described it in that article, which is that we wear it on our sleeve, we don’t apologise for it, and for me, it’s okay to be inspired by other films.

[End of etiquette breach. You are now safe to proceed]

Our website is about enthusiasm, and being a geek in the way that you love things maybe a little bit too much…

[Laughs] Exactly!

So that seems to be the deal with all of Mr Robot’s references and nods. That there are derivations, because the things you love are right there.

Right. And by the way, honestly, if we were derivative, that would be a mis-step, but I think we did try to make something original out of the inspirations and I think that’s totally legitimate.

I’m being asked to wrap up so, we have a recurring question on the site that we sort of ask everyone, which is: what’s your favourite Jason Statham film?

I don’t know how many… Jason Statham? I saw Spy on the plane here, he was really funny in that. I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the Transporter films, right, that’s him? What other movies? I didn’t see Bank Job…

Crank?

I didn’t see Crank, although I keep hearing Crank 2 is like, amazing.

Sam Esmail, thank you very much!

Mr. Robot, all episodes coming exclusively to Amazon Prime, Oct 16th