Interview (Written): Sam Esmail

Creator and showrunner of hit TV series ‘Mr. Robot’.

A Creative Screenwriting interview with Sam Esmail who is creator and executive producer of the USA Network TV series ‘Mr. Robot’ and the upcoming TV mini-series adaptation of the 1927 silent film Metropolis.

You took great risks in writing season one of Mr. Robot. How did those risks contribute to the show’s longevity?

Honestly, we didn’t look at it as risks at the time. We were just doing what we thought was authentic and real, and we were exploring the character that we all were intrigued by and compelled by.

As long as those things felt good to us in the writers’ room, that was something that we were always on board with.

Because we hadn’t seen anything like this exactly on television or in the movies, to be honest with you, risk was something that just never factored into it. Once you start letting those external forces enter into the creative process, then it ends up being more about research and what you think the audience will like or what the audience hasn’t seen before. So we tried to keep that out and just really tried to tell an interesting story about a compelling character.

Your characters come from a variety of backgrounds, but they all share a similar mindset. How did you create them?

I’m very much about you write what you know.

This is pretty easy for me because I have a lot of friends in the tech world and in the hacker world. I’ve also just read about hacker and tech news just as a hobbyist. So I’ve been around these people and it’s really a very interesting subculture that I actually never thought was accurately portrayed in Hollywood, whether on film or TV.

I just really drew a lot from that, and I drew a lot from my own life, from people that I know. I took as much as I could from personal experiences, as well as from other writers in the room. Authenticity is kind of our motto in the room, and not only goes for the technical accuracy on the show, but for the people as well. In fact, more so for the people, because we wanted these to be very specific and very real people.

The characters are so deep, so ‘flesh and blood’, that it seems like you’ve been working on them for years. Is that correct?

Well, not necessarily pen to paper. In writing anything, there’s always that gestation period where you’re just thinking. I actually think that most of writing is thinking.

So I’ve been thinking about it for years. I would say that I’ve had it in the back of my head since I was in college. It starts with just that inkling, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to tell a story about these people?’ It grows as other details come at you. Then you hit the monsoon of details, and it finally kind of translates to enough excitement for you to get on the laptop and say “I have to write this.”

So yes, in that way it’s probably been 20 years. Pen to paper, once I got to that point, and once I allowed all the forces over those years to sort of coalesce and come together and motivate me, then it just took a few months to actually write it.

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Creative Screenwriting

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