You want everyone to be a full character. No one is just evil, or very few people are, hopefully. They’re characters, so you want to flush them out. You’ve got to show all sides of them. There is definitely an antagonistic relationship between guards and prisoners, and I do think it flares up.

I’m always looking for a nexus, where you can put all these diverse people together, see how they respond to one another, see what they learn about each other, and what they like and don’t like.

On the other hand, we worked a year on this and some people are going to watch it in a night and go, “We want more!” And there is something I miss about the longing and the anticipation for the next episode.

It was enormously challenging because you want that all-American girl, but you also want the cool WASP, privileged white girl. Usually, women in that package aren’t funny.

Even during the casting process, the pools of talent are so deep when you have a call for Latin women or black women or a middle-aged woman because they never get their shot. There’s so much talent there.

But, I like the challenge of, “How can we stretch this out? Where can we go with it?” It’s an open road, especially at Netflix. You can take it anywhere you want.

We’re also talking a lot in the room about planting seeds that can grow over the course of the season, knowing that people might be watching them in bulk. We’d like to bury some Easter eggs and let people find them, later on.

To be able to be there first, I love the pioneer thing. It’s exciting to me. And they pay full rate, they’re really nice, they support the work, and they said yes. What could be bad? It’s the Wild West. You can do what you want.

I don’t set out to write female lead shows, necessarily. I like deeply flawed characters. When they come to me, or when I’m introduced to them, I follow the stories and the people, rather than setting out to do a female lead thing.

As long as there are still interesting stories and still interesting people that we want to meet, I can keep it going. But, we all have to be invested. If the room starts getting bored or I start getting restless, then we’ll either have to change something in the show or maybe end it.