The Sandbox: A See-Saw Podcast On Creativity
Mar 5, 2025 · 1 hr 15 min · 11 segments
How does a writer decide an idea is worth dedicating years of their life to? And how do you structure a story which is layered with the complexities of how lies are told and how we believe them? Emile…
Samantha StraussGuest
Emile ShermanHost
Liz WattsGuest
Sam, where do your ideas come from? How do you find your next project? And I guess a question Ian always likes me to ask is what gives you that confidence and energy to go, yes, this is what I'm going to be devoting the next X years of my life to?
Yeah, and that's the real thing, isn't it? Because you have to be confident to the point of arrogant.
I'm really lucky that I have people to bounce off, like Liz, at Seesaw, and I have a really safe space to develop and to percolate.
I want it to feel a lot for it emotionally and I want to think a lot about it sort of intellectually.
And so those two things, if both of those itches aren't really scratched, if it doesn't feel sort of almost impossible to solve, then I don't know if there's enough to get out of bed for in the morning because you do have to throw yourself at the wall and you have to sort of fight desperately.
Before it used to be really purely character based and I just was so desperate for these people to have a life and feel like a responsible a responsibility that if I couldn't get them onto screen, then they wouldn't exist.
I mean, I also think that there's something in your work that feels very of the moment, not in a faddish way, but it's like you're tapping into a sort of cultural antenna of what we need to talk about.
It's probably what you absorb, you know, through consuming the media that you do and what your friends are going through and what your family is going through and looking around and talking to people.
Sam, where do your ideas come from? How do you find your next project? And I guess a question Ian always likes me to ask is what gives you that confidence and energy to go, yes, this is what I'm going to be devoting the next X years of my life to?
Yeah, and that's the real thing, isn't it? Because you have to be confident to the point of arrogant.
I'm really lucky that I have people to bounce off, like Liz, at Seesaw, and I have a really safe space to develop and to percolate.
I want it to feel a lot for it emotionally and I want to think a lot about it sort of intellectually.
And so those two things, if both of those itches aren't really scratched, if it doesn't feel sort of almost impossible to solve, then I don't know if there's enough to get out of bed for in the morning because you do have to throw yourself at the wall and you have to sort of fight desperately.
Before it used to be really purely character based and I just was so desperate for these people to have a life and feel like a responsible a responsibility that if I couldn't get them onto screen, then they wouldn't exist.
I mean, I also think that there's something in your work that feels very of the moment, not in a faddish way, but it's like you're tapping into a sort of cultural antenna of what we need to talk about.
It's probably what you absorb, you know, through consuming the media that you do and what your friends are going through and what your family is going through and looking around and talking to people.
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