Noah Hawley is the creator of TV shows like Fargo and Alien: Earth.
He's the rare writer who's both an artist and a businessman. He's a model for how to build a career as a creative because he's been able to attract big budgets while maintaining lots of creative control.
What surprised me is how he insists horror is the most cinematic movie genre (and it might explain why Backrooms and Obsession are the two biggest movies in the world right now, even though they had relatively small budgets). Horror is rarely about dialogue. It's deeply visual and runs on lingering camera shots, and it evokes the biggest emotions for the least amount of money because it relies on your imagination instead of putting expensive things on the screen.
Like when a character's sitting with their back to a dark doorway, which makes the viewer tense and uncomfortable. That's why horror is, almost by definition, a low-budget medium.
Horror and comedy are strangely similar. Noah insists that a Key & Peele skit is just like horror... they're just playing the funny side of it. Both of them run on the same engine of tension and release.
So what'd we talk about? Here are the timestamps:
0:25 Hollywood writer's room
6:38 What makes for a good story?
11:19 The state of TV in 2026
16:17 The 2nd season trap
21:23 Horror films
29:40 Scriptwriting
38:05 Can AI write TV shows?
45:34 The problem with Hollywood
1:07:09 Art vs. business
1:10:03 How sound shapes a film
1:15:24 Becoming a better artist
1:17:39 Noah's top career advice
I've shared the full conversation with Noah Hawley below. If you'd rather watch the full thing on YouTube, or listen to the interview on Apple / Spotify, check out the reply tweets.
And I've shared some clips in the reply tweets as well.
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