I had a sort of bad experiences as a playwright early on, when directors were putting in huge concepts that I didn't intend, or they were stylizing something that was compromising the play, so I started to think like, 'Well if I'm going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct.'
I'm always going to be making costumes. It's one of the ways I relax my brain. In addition to the pleasure of having the piece, there is a deep and abiding pleasure for me assembling something in my head - learning to know something in its totality in my head, and then putting together all the constituent parts into a cohesive whole.
Your job as a producer is to make suggestions without putting your ego in front of everything else. Also, I think you want to focus on that artist's best qualities and really highlight them.
I remember getting out of acting school and friends of mine talking about, like, 'You know, I don't think I'm gonna do TV.' Like, people putting on these airs of being picky. And I was never a snob about it.
I hate it when you are watching a movie where the characters are on the news, and for some reason they shoot it with a 35mm camera or a 4K camera, and they just put it on the TV as if that's the way it would look - it always takes me out of it by putting a filter on certain things. If it's too high quality, you're never gonna buy it.
In some ways, what I learned is that you can take a character and breathe with them, and it's up to the audience to interpret rather than you putting moral stamp on the character.
Now that I have joined Instagram, I think I'm on it less than before. Earlier, I used to be there all the time. I'm enjoying it because it's where you have complete control on what you're putting out, as you want it. I don't feel there's a compulsion to be active.