This is one of the biggest reasons I’m a writer: I love creating worlds but also discovering worlds and getting into the lives to people who aren’t myself; that’s really rewarding to me.
And in doing that, creating empathy, hopefully, for people who watch.
So a lot of my research is about that, is about, one, learning the facts and what this part of the country is like but also what kind of people live there and understanding their situation.
So I did a lot of reading, really great journalism from The New York Times, actually, and from so many sources, and then I watched a lot of documentaries: The Overnighters is a really fascinating one, in particular how [the place] affects people on a familial and community level, which I found really fascinating, and it’s a really interesting character study.