of “Late Night.'”

“Can I just remind everybody here

that the stakes could not be higher?”

“So in this scene we have Emma Thompson,

who's playing Katherine Newbury, who

is the star of a late-night talk show,

and she has hit a slump in her ratings.

So she's called all her writers into the writers room

to pitch ideas to try to improve the show.

It's also one of her first times

back in the writers room.

It's sort of that she's not been in the writers room

for quite some time.

And we also have the character Molly,

played by Mindy Kaling, who is a new writer.

She's the diversity hire in the room.

She's the only woman, the only woman of color,

as you can see.

And she is there to kind of try to shake things up a bit.

And in this scene, she has her first attempt

at sort of pitching her ideas for how

to make the show better.

So I really wanted to place them

at opposite ends of the table because one

of the things that I was doing visually in the movie

was kind of telling the audience that these two

women are really on the same journey.

They're just at different points in their career.”

“So I thought I would take a step back and see

what wasn't working.

This is what I do at quality control

at the chemical plant, and I thought I would do that here.

The headline of my analysis is complacency.”

“And so we always were trying to mirror

both in the sound design and the score and in the shooting

that Mindy Kaling's character Molly and Emma Thompson's

character Katherine are really very similar, even

though they couldn't be further apart.

It just was always challenging for how do we make, you know,

a writers room, which really is just

people sitting around a table pitching ideas,

visually interesting.”

“Third, I think people get very excited

when you share your beliefs.

So what you just said about the Miss America Pageant,

that was awesome.

When you reveal those kind of strong opinions,

it's when you really come alive as a performer.”

“That's when I come alive as a performer?”

“Yeah.”

“Could I see that?”

“Absolutely.”

“This is one of my favorite moments

right here is when Molly has to put forward her pitches,

and it gets passed all the way down the table,

and it just seemed like the perfect blocking

to get a sense of all the sort of untruthfulness

that happens in this room.

And Molly sort of cuts through it by daring

to tell the truth.”

“What's the solution?”

“Oh, I don't have one.”

“Just to be clear, you don't have any new ideas or jokes.”

“And it does not go so well for her.”

“O.K., I've been doing this job for nearly 30 years,

and I know what works, and I'll

tell you what doesn't work — an absurdly confident

newcomer coming in criticizing my show

and giving me her assessment of my comic persona.

Without — “

“So here we have Katherine approaching the camera

as we sort of counter dolly away from her.

It's to show her sort of growing in size as she's

imposing onto Mindy and coming towards Molly's character

and putting her in her place, really.”

“I have not changed.

The audience has changed.

They don't want smart comedy.

They want Kevin Hart on a slip and slide.

So let's just give them what they want.

Who's the most tacky famous person out there?”