No family is complete without an embarrassing uncle.
Peter Morgan
I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.
There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.
People bang on all the time about whether what I've done is the truth or not. Well, to me, history is just a series of elaborate fictions.
I watch drama on DVD because I can't stand ad breaks.
I don't think of the crown as this glamorous thing. It's this murderous, bejeweled thing, the crown.
I'm not being presumptuous, I hope, when I say that 'The Crown' is little bit like 'The Godfather.' It is essentially about a family in power and survival.
I don't think I'm an unhappy person. It's just an intensity, not a depressive thing. It's just not having enough layers of skin. It's exhausting.
The film 'The Queen' came about with a producer saying to me that he wanted me to write about the circumstances behind Diana's death. I think he was hoping that I would come up with some journalistic scoop that would identify an MI5 covert plot.
When I started writing the screenplay for 'The Queen,' about the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, both Stephen Frears, the director, and Andy Harries, the producer, begged me not to put Tony Blair in it.
There is no inherent contradiction between being right-wing and being intelligent.
By nature of the job, most actors are striking, remarkable, and alpha.
As a dramatist, you have 200 choices at every fork in the road. But the audience will reject it if you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character in a way that suits you. It rings false immediately. People can sense when you're being cynical or schematic.
As any showrunner will tell you, it is crushing work. It is around the clock. It is like a monastic commitment that you make.
I have always cited the decision by director Stephen Frears to shoot 'Mrs. Henderson Presents' before my script of 'The Queen' as the reason for my taking the plunge as a playwright.
There is something fantastically post-modern about David Frost.
It's madness to hand in a script to a director, leave them alone, and for the director not to want the writer there with rehearsals and the shoot.
I actually speak fluent German. And I live in Vienna, and I'm married to a Viennese woman.
Everything I write, I've written the first draft in Austria.
I do have an innate understanding of where a story should or shouldn't go, in a way that I don't think can be taught.
I don't want to become too self-conscious - it's why I never read reviews, even the good ones.
Nixon had lists upon lists upon lists. They were tragic lists saying, 'Smile more,' or, 'Be stronger - remember, it is your job to spiritually uplift the nation.' This understanding of his limitations is heartbreaking.
In my peaceful moments, I yearn to write a bank heist like the one in 'Heat.'
Self-destruction is such an interesting thing for a dramatist, and what's particular to Nixon is how human the failings were that led to his downfall.
The feelings we all have as 50-year-olds are different than the feelings we all have as 30-year-olds. That informs everything we do.
It was so interesting to discover Nixon was a Californian. I always think Nixon should come from a cold place.
I'm quick to be upset. My feelings are close to the surface. There is not much gap between a thought and a feeling with me. It makes it difficult for some people. I feel too much.
The minute you become a leader of a country, you go into a very small club. You join that sort of pantheon of other world leaders.
There's nothing wrong with anybody from any other country having a perspective on the British royal family. It would be interesting. But I just doubt that they would get the dialogue right.
I'm not an artist, and I want to take risks, and when the possibility of failure occurs, it's because the idea is all exciting or interesting as a high wire act, and sometimes you've got to fall off, just by virtue of the fact that you're constantly trying to evolve and do new things.
Every dramatist will tell you that they know deep down what happened in the course of making that film and to what degree they took steps that were convenient and to what degree they took steps in telling their story that were dishonest. You know in your heart of hearts.
It's important to me what the viewers think.
I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.
People test movies within an inch of their life so that the entire audience experience is a uniform one.
You're either a person with a conscience, or you're not. I think I've got quite a fine conscience.
Generally, I read nonfiction. There's very little fiction that I enjoy enough to spend my time reading. I am generally a nonfiction guy.
Movies feel like work, and reading fiction feels like work, whereas reading nonfiction feels like pleasure.
The first and primary requirement for me in a director that I'd want to work with is: do they love writing, and do they love the collaboration process with writers?
I have no directing ambition whatsoever. And as long as I meet filmmakers like Tom Hooper, Stephen Frears, and others who allow that collaboration, I can't see why I would ever want to direct.
I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.
I don't understand and don't enjoy sci-fi, and it's just that if people aren't real, and they don't live in a real and recognizable society, I don't understand what to do.
Once I start writing about somebody, I become very protective of them.
You can be far more challenging, articulate and intelligent writing for television than you can writing for the cinema.
If you don't belong somewhere, that outsider status you have gives you perspective. Of course, another word for outsider is 'exile,' and that's not fun at all.
As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.
If you have distance from the events, then your story can work as an analogy or parable rather than its literal narrative.
If you think about what you do, if you become self-conscious about it, you've got to be very careful. Because I really like to write without self-awareness of what I'm doing.
I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.
For a younger generation to imagine a time where there was no security at airports - going around the world in the bar of a jumbo jet, 'Tell the plane to wait, I'm running late!' - there is something very Austin Powers about David Frost, a man who, in all seriousness, would approach women in a safari suit, with sideburns.
The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.
