How the digital upload works when you die is the hardest piece of technology in our show. I have my own private explanation: I think it's a photographic process where a very, very bright light burns off a layer of cells one at a time and then it's photographed. It goes all the way down and the computer reassembles the very high-definition photography into a complete 3D model of your every molecular connection. I don't know, it's all bulls***!
But I'm kind of looking forward to this actually working because it's our shot of something persisting afterwards. I think you do exist, in the effect that you have on other people, their memories or whatever. I'm not sure if there's a cloud that we all sit on, wearing robes.
My father is a great storyteller. He tells humorous stories about everything that's ever happened to him so I grew up hearing that. Then I had to pick a livelihood. At the time I was thinking maybe I would try to be a lawyer or maybe I would try to write stories. Most people I knew thought it was a bad idea for me to go into law because I was already argumentative enough.
I have a lot of ideas for products that nobody wants. You can only exploit the ideas you're in a position to exploit, right? I'm a TV producer so if I have an idea for a TV show I can generally get someone to listen to that, but if I have an idea for a backup camera for a car that begins recording for 30 seconds when someone rear-ends you, what am I supposed to do with that?
My number one storytelling rule is you have to surprise people. You're looking to surprise someone which means you have to hide your true intentions until the right moment and then suddenly reveal them. That's important because if the audience knows what's going to happen from the beginning it's like, "Meh."
The Office was a situation where there was this great British show and American TV didn't look anything like that at the time. I was very excited to try and use the American TV system to pull off something like that. Then when we started Parks and Recreation it was like, let's give this a different feel from The Office, let's make it more colourful and optimistic.
At first, most people thought The Office was way too boringly realistic and dark, while Parks and Recreation was too optimistic. But ultimately all good stories have to have great protagonists, great characters and original situations to put them in. And a certain amount of pace to it. At least that's what I think.
And you want to zig as much as you can when everyone else is zagging.
As told to Karl Puschmann
Greg Daniels' series Upload begins its second season this Friday on Amazon Prime Video.