I spoke with Selman about what led to one of the most talked-about installments of The Simpsons in recent history.

At the beginning of the episode, Homer’s coworkers Lenny and Karl strike up a conversation at the water cooler about the latest Radioactive Man film. Is this a common occurrence?

Homer comes in and everyone’s talking about the movie and he doesn’t want it to be ruined. It’s what we felt was a common phenomenon of modern life, where you have to avoid something really popular that everyone has seen but you. It’s sometimes really hard to avoid finding out what happens. Certainly at work on The Simpsons, someone will come in Monday after a big [episode of] Game of Thrones and we’ll all be talking about it and we’ll be like, “If you haven’t seen it: get out.” Or a big episode of Breaking Bad or a serialized TV show. [“Steal This Episode”] is mainly about movies but I think a lot of the stuff talked about applies to TV shows with all the downloading and spoilers and the way people experience media now.

Has anything been ruined for you?

A small example is something from another Game of Thrones [episode], where I really didn’t want the show to be ruined and then I read an interview with George R. R. Martin about who would win—Jaime Lannister or Aragorn—in a fight. That’s a safe article for me to read, right? Spoiler alert if you’re reading this article at home, but the first thing out of George R. R. Martin’s mouth was, “Well of course the fight would take place before Jamie’s hand gets cut off.” And I was like, “Fuck!” I tried so hard to avoid that.

With this episode, are you trying to comment on things that have relevance now?

We were trying to be somewhat current, but reference bigger trends that will be around for a while. The Simpsons isn’t going to do an episode on Justin Bieber being arrested while drunk or whatever he did, but maybe we’d do a story on the trend of bad behavior in teen stars. When Homer was upset in the theater, I think we needed a reason for Homer to pirate movies that isn’t just him being greedy. You’re not as involved in his story if his reasons are selfish. His reasons are benevolent and you can’t really not relate to them. And that’s a way more involving story. When you’re sitting in a theater and you’ve paid and there’s a whole ton of ads—$20 for the 3D ticket and $20 for food and $20 for parking and a babysitter—and you go see a movie that probably isn’t even that great and now you’re going to show me an ad: I mean, come on! The line of integrity in even popular entertainment and advertising has been obliterated. Which is obviously the kind of point we’re making in that episode. At the end of the episode we’re trying to sell you aftershave.

Why is the topic of piracy relevant now?

I got into this story because of that guy Kim Dotcom. He’s a very entertaining character. Obviously, for whatever reasons media companies are fighting people’s feelings [about] media companies. It’s never going to be a black and white issue. And that’s what was interesting about it for us, that this is not a black and white issue. Movie streaming and downloading is a crime; however, the people they’re stealing from are also criminals.