I wasn’t part of any of the creative conversations when the property was at HBO. I’ve heard from people who were involved with it that there were differing opinions about what the show should be. It was simul-developed with Game Of Thrones, which is a big sprawling, fantastical world, a heightened reality of sorts, so I think there was probably nervousness about cross-pollinating those worlds and concern about keeping them very distinct from each other. When you are developing something you have to look at it individually. You can’t compare and contrast it to the projects around it, because that way madness lies. You need the project to be what the project needs to be, as opposed to ‘no, it can’t be that, because this other thing is that so we have to find another thing for it to be’. That would be one interpretation of what happened.

On keeping the characters’ races intact:

In our conversations about who our ideals are for specific roles, Shadow is described as… is he a gypsy? Is he Hispanic? Is he black? Or is he all of those things in one? So we know that he is not white! I think if we cast a white man to play Shadow we would be the biggest assholes on television.

On what stage the scripts are at:

We’ve broken the first three episodes, Michael Green and I, and we’re having so much fun. It’s such a different muscle to Hannibal. There’s a big, bold, sprawling world that is at our fingertips that is going to be so much fun to explore.