Ben McKenzie

And I had also done so much TV, you know, a couple hundred hours of TV that I was like, I got to try a new thing.

You got to give me more stuff to do.

Basically, I just kept asking them.

You know, I got to go to the writer's room after the first year and sit with them and hang with them.

I didn't get to write yet.

And so you slowly build up that trust and you basically slowly break them down to the point where they sort of have to let you try it.

It wasn't episodic.

Well, if it helps at all, I feel like I sort of have the opposite experience where you're assigned the episode that you're going to write because the season's already broken down.

You've been in the room at least a little bit.

I do remember doing a pass and like, there was a lot of red.

There's a lot of suggestions.

Yeah, no suggestions slash we're just going to change that.

But it was fun, man.

It was really good.

And it really did prepare me because it was a network show.

There were commercials.

So you're writing to commercial breaks like every single time.

So there's a lot of story math.

There's a lot of stuff where I was like, okay, he needs to go up.

and then it goes down and then it's up again.