Sam Esmail Quotes

Sam Esmail

Profession : Director

Birth : September 17, 1977

The one thing that I know from the personal experiences that I've had with hackers and from people in tech who are brilliant at this thing, is there's a lot of angst.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

I've seen shows that start to go down the path of fan service, and it really diminishes the quality.

Sam Esmail

What resonates with me whenever I watch a great movie or TV show is the balance of inevitability and unpredictability. And it's a very delicate balance.

Sam Esmail

I think people are more than their heritage or their skin colour or their name or how they grew up.

Sam Esmail

Sound design is always critical, especially when you're doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.

Sam Esmail

I have a brilliant sound design team who's been working with me since 'Mr. Robot,' and one of the things we always think about - and it's also something we think about with cinematography - is how we get inside the characters' heads and how do we place the audience where we want them to be or how we want them to feel at any given moment.

Sam Esmail

I never let the technical stuff get in the way of the storytelling.

Sam Esmail

The 2016 election, I'm sure, wasn't the first one to be hacked; it was just the first one that was made public.

Sam Esmail

When events like the Sony Hack or the news of the Russian hack of our election, we're not shocked by such events, but they are troubling.

Sam Esmail

A lot of unexpected things do happen on 'Mr. Robot.'

Sam Esmail

I don't think it's political to dislike Trump. I don't think it's controversial to say he's a bad president. He's clearly a bad president. He's clearly not equipped to do the job.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

I use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.

Sam Esmail

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!

Sam Esmail

I went to NYU undergrad, then went to AFI for grad school.

Sam Esmail

I went to film school to direct.

Sam Esmail

It's weird; my fascination with tech was kind of combined with the fact that my parents would never pay for anything. It got me more involved because I would have to find clever ways to get things for free.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail