Sam Esmail Quotes

Sam Esmail

Profession : Director

Birth : September 17, 1977

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.

Sam Esmail

With some actors, if I have upward of 10 notes, I don't want to give them all 10 notes and overwhelm them. I usually parse them out three or four at a time.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

Tone is very important to me.

Sam Esmail

With acting, a lot of it has to come from that real, honest place.

Sam Esmail

Even great actors who transform who they are still go to a really honest place; I think that's sort of that special skill that actors have.

Sam Esmail

I think I was told numerous times in the industry that nobody wants to watch a guy on a keyboard.

Sam Esmail

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?

Sam Esmail

I was anti-conformist.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

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?

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

With TV season structures - and I'm a huge TV watcher - you look at shows like 'Breaking Bad,' which is my favorite show of all time, and 'The Sopranos,' which is pretty high up there as well, and there was that thing where, every season, Walter White would go up a level, but there would be a new bad.

Sam Esmail

I'm not saying I'm a control freak, though I'll admit that I am at times.

Sam Esmail

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.

Sam Esmail

I'm very protective of my online life, and I try and take as many security measures.

Sam Esmail

I never look at twists as a way to trick the audience. Obviously, I think a good story has surprises and unexpected turns, and you always want to do that with an audience. But it has nothing to do with conning them or making them believe so strongly in one thing and then kind of going the other way.

Sam Esmail

B. D. Wong is one of my favorite actors.

Sam Esmail

Girls rejected me a lot.

Sam Esmail