Reality, in general, in my opinion, has gotten blurred.
Sam Esmail
The story of 'Mr. Robot' is really about this guy who's lonely - who's alone and feels so disconnected from the world.
I don't mind Twitter. I think it's a lot of nonsense, but at least, to me, Twitter is just more of a public forum to have conversation.
I love when a protagonist and antagonist can find common ground.
We frame things in an off-kilter way because it's unsettling. In the 'Mr. Robot' world, that's the norm, and it's the norm for the point of view that we're looking for, which is Elliot's. With our compositions and our visual language and camera movements, it's important to always evoke that unsettling feeling underneath every scene.
I've always said that the first season was the first act of my feature, so this is what I meant. I wanted the story of 'Mr. Robot' to be Elliot actually accomplishing his goal, setting the world into chaos. What would happen to society if something like this occurred where, basically, if the consumer-debt industry were to be erased?
If your loved ones are far away, and they're uploading pictures, you feel like that's enough: these loose strands through email, through social media, are going to supply this connection you have with that person. And I think that's keeping us isolated and lonely in a way that's very dangerous because we're unaware of it.
I always thought the writing process for movies and TV shows was just a blueprint. The making of it was the thing.
I took Pascal, and I was terrible. And then, when I went to NYU, I minored in computer science. I just couldn't code. I just didn't have the patience for it.
I've always been fascinated by this idea of who we are versus who we want to be.
Do I want a character who just has the best motives and the best intentions, zero flaws, and is doing things for the right reasons? No!
You don't even know if the person you're communicating with online is actually that person. And your persona on your social media - your Facebook or Twitter - may not be the person you are in real life. So then, who is the real person? Is it somewhere in between?
I always suspend logic for emotion. If it feels real, or it feels like what I'm going for, we should abandon reality a little bit and go for that. I'm not a documentarian. We're not trying to shoot things for naturalism.
In a weird way, I never wanted - I don't consider myself a very good writer. I consider myself okay; I don't consider myself great. There's Woody Allen and Aaron Sorkin. There's Quentin Tarantino. I'm not ever gonna be on that level. But I do consider myself a good filmmaker.
I love voiceover. I never understood this idea that it was lazy. Well, yes, there are those movies or TV shows that use it as just a way to get out exposition. But you know what? That's just bad writing.
Growing up, my parents were very much about the Egyptian culture. They never really wanted to assimilate in American culture.
'Mr. Robot' is more directly about technology, and 'Homecoming' deals more with the pharmaceutical industry, but I think they're all part and parcel of this growing sense that things are happening behind the scenes at our expense, and we're not aware of it.
I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican or a conservative, the election of Trump is a national tragedy for multiple reasons. It will go down as one of the worst tragedies in American history. But he's not a dictator. This happened because we either allowed it or voted for it.
I think I was told numerous times in the industry that nobody wants to watch a guy on a keyboard.
I absolutely don't deny that I was inspired by 'Fight Club,' among many other television shows and films. I completely not only acknowledge it, I own it and love to nod to them as much as possible.
Music is everything to me. It's the heart and soul of a movie or TV show to me because it can be such an injection of tone, and I think tone is everything to a story.
I did have friends who have suffered from schizophrenia and mild dissociative identity disorder, as well as more extreme cases of social anxiety disorder.
On 'Mr. Robot,' because I run the writers' room and know every decision behind every line of dialogue, I'm able to be nimble and adapt with the scripts and the moments. I never have to question what I'm doing as I'm directing the actors or going through the scenes.
I had a funny last name, and I didn't look like everybody else, and I got faced with a lot of racism.
I'm controlling over anything I create. I'm very precious about it.
For shows that are hyper-serialized, it just seems to make more sense to follow a feature film model than follow a television model, which was set up more for a procedural type of show.
Sound design is always critical, especially when you're doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.
If you think about it, just the psychology of the superhero is, 'Because I can, I should protect people, and I should put bad guys away, and I should defend society.' But you're forming your own justice. There's no judge and jury here: you are it. That, in and of itself, is a very complicated way of looking at morality.
Girls rejected me a lot.
It's strange not to allow the actor some input and breathing room into what was written on the page - it is their job to make it come alive.
I was a nerd, growing up, I was really into computers and technology, and most of my friends were basically in that world as well.
I remember growing up in suburban New Jersey, and all the computer stores were like, 'Motherboard Mayhem' and all these cheesy names.
I used to want to be a critic. I think it's an awesome job. You get to watch all this stuff and then write about it and analyze it and give insight into it. That's an amazing job. I was terrible at it, though.
I went to NYU undergrad, then went to AFI for grad school.
I did not love going out to parties or even get-togethers, really - I went to the movies, which, if you think about it, is an isolating experience anyway - and this was because I had anxiety about interacting with people.
I never try and tune anything out. I think that's a mistake. You want to bring all the honest stuff that's going on inside you into your work. Otherwise, you're keeping a lot of authenticity out.
The experience you're going to take the audience on is as important as the story you're trying to tell. And that experience needs to excite me so much that I am desperate to share it.
I don't want to watch a show or a movie about the guy who doesn't have any problems, who is sort of a goodie two shoes and just does everything morally right, because that's not the person I relate to. That's not who I am. That's not what anyone is.
You have to have that core creative team around you who's going to support your vision, and challenge and evolve it.
I think there is more cohesion when you have one director on set.
'Fight Club' is great in its spirit of anti-establishment.
I went to film school to direct.
One of my favorite Tarantino films is 'Jackie Brown,' and 'Jackie Brown' does it so well, where I'm watching the back half of that movie, and I don't know which side Jackie Brown is playing. I think it's really ingenious for Tarantino to keep us in the dark on that.
I used to hold Stanley Kubrick film festivals at my house in high school. These are not cool things.
Movies and television show build on top of each other, succeed one another. In a large way, in terms of filmmaking aesthetics, they evolve because they can't help but be a consequence of all the movies and TV shows that came before it.
When I first created the world of 'Mr. Robot,' I thought it would be a niche television series with a small, cult following.
When I started thinking about 'Mr. Robot,' I thought about it as a movie, and I thought about the complete arc, and that is the one story I'm going to tell.
Typically, whenever you're envisioning how you're going to shoot something, you have a location or a set that you're going to build, and it's going to be built to specifications.
I'm Egyptian, and my parents stupidly decided to move us down to South Carolina when I was five, which was pretty brutal.
The world is so heavily influenced by technology, and it has started to feel like it's not on solid ground. The world has become unreliable, unknowable. Facts are vulnerable, and things you have come to rely on are no longer there.
