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Just the idea that someone is married and they've got a kid, and he reports for work one morning and his boss says, You're wife is a spy. Shoot her. In the real story, he just went back and did it, which would have been a short film. Therefore, I had to spend some time exploring what you would do.

Steven Knight

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Steven Knight
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: August 5
Executive Producer
Film Director
Screenwriter
Birmingham
West Midlands
Ideas
Morning
Shoot
Real
Story
Therefore
Work
Idea
Spend
Would
Film
Short
Time
Kids
Married
Spy
Someone
Says
Exploring
Stories
Went
Reports
Back
Wife
Boss

More quotes by Steven Knight

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[2015] it's a time that there's a clash of ideologies, similar to the Cold War. I think that a story like this has been waiting to be told, and I think it's a fresh look at the whole earth-shattering business of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Steven Knight
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I wanted to take a damaged individual in a damaged society with damaged relationships between nations and take a look at how this individual survives amongst them, and that for me as a writer is the connection that you needed to get inside the skin of the main character and wonder how he's going to cope with all this.
Steven Knight
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I think the East India Company represents what we would think of as a very modern approach to the world where everything was counted, every penny was counted.
Steven Knight
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I'm very bad at watching anything. I'm bad at going to theaters I can't watch my own stuff I watch a lot of sports.
Steven Knight
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I'm not suggesting that ours [series] is unique in that, but they can begin to have that depth, that gravity, they can spend some time, so it's a bit more like reading a good novel, if you like.
Steven Knight
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With any period piece I think the thing to do is forget that it's not contemporary when you're writing and to have the characters feel as much as possible like characters that you would know.
Steven Knight
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East India Company were a huge multinational that had the added impetus that they felt they were spreading Christian civilization around the world - so they were pretty free to do anything they wanted.
Steven Knight
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I've spent three hours with Snoop Dogg, talking about how he loved [Peaky Blinders series]. And David Bowie loved it. The late Leonard Cohen was a fan. It struck a chord with various people that I didn't think it would.
Steven Knight
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If you've read something brilliant, it's good. It's good to look out the window and see what's going on in the world.
Steven Knight
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[Taboo] has been exactly the same as working with the BBC in that creatively they do that precious thing which is to only make a comment when a comment needs to be made.
Steven Knight
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I like to create a character where you believe, deep down, that they don't really care if they live or die. That's very liberating for the character because, if the character is prepared to die, then they can do anything. It's impossible to stop them.
Steven Knight
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In other words, when you have someone [like Ridley Scott] with that authority, then you tend to be left alone. But they were good and they're really good people, and I'm a big champion of the BBC and I think that like minds find each other and I think that FX and BBC is a perfect match.
Steven Knight
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Suddenly, after years of television being the poor relation and film being everything, it now feels like film is a conjuring trick. It's like, Oh, my god, how are you going to do that in 90 minutes, as opposed to eight hours?! I've got so little time to do this! It becomes an art form, in itself. Doing both helps you do each one.
Steven Knight
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I spoke to Tom's [Hardy] manager and said, While we're talking about Taboo, do you mind if I also mention this film project that I've got, which is called Locke, and I need Tom to play the lead. And we spoke about both in that meeting and in the end the deal was that I would do Taboo if he did Locke and vice versa.
Steven Knight
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You work, especially in the movie business more than in TV, but you have an environment where people feel obliged to have an input because that's what they do, and I think sometimes it can clutter things up and make things more problematic.
Steven Knight
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I wouldn't put myself in that bracket, but it's one of those things. I think what helps is that we [with Tom Hardey] don't socialize, we don't really know each other, we purely work together.
Steven Knight
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I don't think that jealousy and love and hate and anger and all those things have changed in the past 200 years - people just express themselves differently.
Steven Knight
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The plan is that there would be three seasons [in Taboo], and, as with Peaky Blinders, I have had a destination in mind from the beginning, because I think it helps as a writer. The destination in mind is that James Keziah Delaney sets foot on Nootka Sound. But that's a long way off.
Steven Knight
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I've realized that the only thing I'm interested in is the performance. If the performance is right, then I'm happy. You offer up the dialogue and then the performance comes around.
Steven Knight
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I visited the set [of Allied] a few times, and it was a great set to visit. A lot of it was in West London, in an old Gillette factory. You'd go into the factory through the security, and then there were a lot of camels and goats. Most sets are really dull, but this was fantastic.
Steven Knight