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Capital punishment? It makes no sense as a policy: It's not a deterrent, and economically it's a disaster. It's very clear that there are innocent people on death row. And if I put an innocent person to death, that's murder.
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It was great to essentially have two protagonists where you're sympathies could go back and forth between the two of them, throughout the season.
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I've been a political junkie for a long time. I find the way Washington works is just fascinating to me.
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Whether it's movies or television that I've directed, or characters that I've played, I'm just always fascinated by the moral ambiguity inherent in life.
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Once you go Kerry Washington, you can’t go back
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I'm a moderate Democrat. I've always been fascinated and maddened by the way things get done in our system, which as an ideal is so extraordinary, but the way it actually works can be mind-boggling.
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Relationships are super complicated and always have dark and light in them. And all good sexual relationships do, too.
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My parents kept us sheltered from this world of Hollywood. I don't have any great memories of bouncing on Cary Grant's knee or something like that
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Nothings wrong with honest emotion.
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I really enjoy directing television because you get to work in so many different genres and with different people.
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I directed and produced Conviction, a movie about a man who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. I got to know Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck very well - he's a character in the movie - and I got very passionate about the cause. It's just so inherently dramatic.
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One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.
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We want to live in the black and white, but we don't. The world is gray. And, I'm always fascinated by people who are clearly, 'This is black and this is white, and that's the way life is.' Life always has something to say about that.
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I think the problem with polemics is that it's general and it's lazy. When you say, "This is bad," that's a general thing. We're more interested in asking the question.
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Life is a very emotional experience.
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My mother's whole family had been from the theater, really. Because I grew up in Hollywood, I wasn't that interested in Hollywood. But the New York theater was completely exotic and fabulous to me.
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I want to keep doing different things. I'd like to do a more personal, dramatic movie next, I think. But as long as it's about characters and good writing and good parts for actors, that's what's important
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I'm always perversely attracted to characters that seem one thing, but are ultimately revealed as another...
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If you're in a popular TV show, you can attract attention, and I like to help focus that on stories that deserve to be told - which is what politicians do. But I would lose my autonomy, and to get things done I would have to compromise and get into the weeds of policy. I don't know if I'm smart enough.
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In television, the creator is really the voice...
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The more decisions you make, the better, statistically, your odds of success are. And what I also learned was, it doesn't matter: anything can be fixed. When you're directing, you can agonize, but you can't indulge. Stuff has to happen
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I don't want to do an action movie, because I've acted in them, and they're so boring to do, because they're so technical. The headache of that is daunting. But, if it were an action movie with really interesting characters, how great would that be?
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The network was fantastic, but you get a lot of anxiety with any production. It was very helpful to have both of us because we could back each other up. As a creator, a director and a filmmaker, you often get assaulted and you lose perspective because you have all of this pressure. It was so nice to call him and say, "What do you think?"
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I grew up in Hollywood. Saying my name here is like mentioning Ford in Detroit