A lot of your work is dedicated to showing what goes on behind the scenes at some institution with a big public presence — Apple, the White House, Facebook, cable news and so on. What about that sort of story attracts you? When I was 5 years old, the father of a classmate was in ‘‘Fiddler on the Roof.’’ One day, we ended up backstage, and I remember standing there in awe and bewilderment. I was looking at someone in profile singing ‘‘Miracle Of Miracles,’’ and I wasn’t able to see the audience or anything. I have always liked it back there.

Your work often centers on someone who has been publicly wronged or had an embarrassing failure, who then shows up his critics. As someone who has had his share of private struggles made public, do you see any parallels in your own work? Of course. I like these stories because I am dismayed at how entertained we have become at the expense of others. It doesn’t speak well of us, and it’s gotten much, much worse, obviously, with social media.

Would you have entertained a Trump-­wins-­the-­nomination plotline on ‘‘The West Wing’’? If the characters on ‘‘The West Wing’’ were watching a TV show wherein a character like Trump was leading in the polls, they wouldn’t find it believable.

You once described your past cocaine addiction as lonely, as if it was almost work. Does that experience with addiction inform your characters — especially Steve Jobs? It’s very hard for me to think of that as productive at all, as anything other than suicidal. I understand Steve Jobs’s intensity in other ways: He wanted perfection from the things he built because he knew he wasn’t going to find it in life.