Peter Morgan

For 'Frost/Nixon,' I had eight people who were present at those interviews - they were all in the room - and when I interviewed each of them, they had a totally different narrative of events, to the degree where you thought, 'Were you all really in the same room?'

I'm not being presumptuous, I hope, when I say that 'The Crown' is little bit like 'The Godfather.' It is essentially about a family in power and survival.

I wrote 'Hereafter' quickly and without mapping it out too much or being too schematic. As an exercise, I think that was incredibly important.

I don't think of the crown as this glamorous thing. It's this murderous, bejeweled thing, the crown.

As a dramatist, you have 200 choices at every fork in the road. But the audience will reject it if you make the wrong choice, if they feel you are trying to shape the character in a way that suits you. It rings false immediately. People can sense when you're being cynical or schematic.

I insist to this day that if you read the screenplay to 'The Queen,' it leaves you in no doubt that we considered her an isolated, out-of-touch, cold, emotionally inaccessible, overprivileged, deluded woman, heading an institution that should immediately be dismantled in any free and fair society.

There is no inherent contradiction between being right-wing and being intelligent.

I'm quick to be upset. My feelings are close to the surface. There is not much gap between a thought and a feeling with me. It makes it difficult for some people. I feel too much.

I don't think I'm an unhappy person. It's just an intensity, not a depressive thing. It's just not having enough layers of skin. It's exhausting.

As a child, I grew up the son of German immigrant parents, so I grew up being teased and called 'Fritz' at school. When I married my wife and went to live in Vienna, I was teased for being a Brit.

I'm not good at fantasy, no. I have been offered stuff, and I can't get my head around it.

I am not a politics wonk. I like the idea of my writing reflecting more about who I am or other people.