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Patreon Preview: Steven Moffat

Note: This is a preview of “The Strange Comedy of Doctor Who and Mister Moffat”, my 3,300-word interview with Steven Moffat. To read the full essay, please join my Patreon account at the $10 “Fresh copy!” level.

“I always wanted to be a writer,” said Steven Moffat, thumbing a goodnight text to his wife—eight hours in our future and headed for bed—into his Blackberry. “There was never a time where I wanted to be anything else. I can’t recall any other ambitions, quite honestly.”

It was Saturday, 17 February 2007, and we were sat in a quiet corridor of the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, the din of a nearby convention underscoring our conversation.

“The very first things I wrote were an adaptation—a very bad one, as you’d expect from a seven-year-old—of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and endless Doctor Who stories. I have the distinction—this year—of writing my own new version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Doctor Who; hurray, I’ve really made progress there.”

To continue reading, please join me on Patreon. Your interest in my work is much appreciated.

JASON DAVIS
Freelance Writer

John Cleese (1939–)

In the course of reading his Creativity: A short and cheerful guide (Crown, 2020), I realized two things about John Cleese:

1) His approach to creativity is exactly the same as David Lynch’s.

2) He would have been as brilliant a philosopher as Douglas Adams.


BERLIN, GERMANY – SEPTEMBER 13: John Cleese attends the 55th Rose d’Or Award at Axica-Kongress- und Tagungszentrum on September 13, 2016 in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Clemens Bilan/Getty Images)

“The trouble is that most people want to be right. The very best people, however, want to know if they are right. That’s the great thing about working in comedy. If the audience doesn’t laugh, you know you’ve got it wrong.”

John Cleese (1939–)

Abi Morgan (1968–)

“The older I get, the more I have to think long and hard about what I need to say and why.”
Abi Morgan (1968–)

Photo by Sarah Lee.