It is the rare television program that leaves iconic images embedded in our consciousness and changes the medium itself. One such show is the acclaimed Emmy and Golden Globe-winning series Mr. Robot, created by the innovative Sam S. Mal. It is my pleasure to share with you his breathtaking vision and insights. Sam, welcome to the show. It is a pleasure to have you here on Between the Lines. It's fun to be here. This is gonna be fun. It is, and I told you, I hinted at something in the green room where I said I've kind of surprised you with a little something here. I only had, I've had many showrunners and producers on my show, but I've only had two who I've had on in the middle of the series run. The first one was Matt Weiner, the creator of Mad Men, and the second one now is you, the creator of Mr. Robot. And I'll tell you the reason why. My son said, Dad, you have to watch Mr. Robot because there's something about it that's gonna drive

you wild, and one of the things he knew was my love that I had for the iconic character Don Draper and the way the relationship was between Matt Winer and Jon Hamm to create this character that neither one of them were really like. Well, I watched Mr. Robot, and there is Rami Malek, your star, and again, in my opinion, now currently the most iconic television character on period, bar none. And I said, I have to find out. There must be the same kind of bond between Sam and Rami to get this character to be this way. Oh yeah, I mean, there is, and it was weird to us initially, you know, when he came in for the audition. I knew nothing of his, you know, background, but you know, ethnically, we're the same, you know, we're both from Egyptian immigrants, first-generation Americans. He, you know, we had a lot of similarities in sort of our upbringing, the food we ate, you know, the sort of morality we were kind of under growing up, and then also, you know, we had similarities. Our fathers had just

passed away years years before we started shooting the first season, so we had a lot in common, and we were basically like brothers right off the bat. But when you develop this character, neither one of you are necessarily like Elliott, right? That's what makes it so interesting. Yeah, I mean, he well, he definitely isn't anything like Elliott. He's the most social, like well-adjusted person I know. I have probably more in common than him, but obviously, you know, nothing close to the actual Elliot Alderson character. Now, well, now we start the show off with the words hello friend, you're only in my head, and that concept that you do is you literally, and again, I'm not saying this hasn't existed. All I'm saying is I am not aware of it in television before you bring us into this man's head. We play, in a certain sense, a role. He's talking to us, and I, and I don't, I know technically the term is called voice-over, I guess, but we need a new name for

it because this isn't voice-over like you're used to. This really grabs you in the soul, unlike someone who was just reading something voice-over. This is putting you in his head, right? And what you know, the thing about voice-over, because growing up, especially in film school, you know voice-over gets a really bad rap. I mean, people really put it down, and it's oftentimes, you know, in terms of screenwriting, people say it's a crutch because you can get exposition and information out that in an, in quote-unquote, a lazy way rather than trying to creatively put it into a scene. The, I've always resisted that because some of my favorite films, Clockwork Orange, Taxi Driver, used voice-over in this really brilliant way that actually, do you know, shows the inner life of the character that otherwise you could not do in a scene. And yes, there is that voice-over where it's, you know, it's not even present tense, it's past tense, it's, Let me tell you a story, and let me

fill in all the details and sure that could get X positive and feel like a crutch, but the voiceover, you know, and this is one of the things that really motivated me to figure it out for Mr. Robot, because I knew I wanted to be in Elliott's head. That's what this show was about, Elliott's head interior. It takes place in, is exactly, and I thought, thought came up with the idea of us being that imaginary friend, that person that he can confide in, that because if this show's about loneliness, what, well, how does our voiceover sort of complement that? And I thought, oh, that's interesting. He can't, he can't open up to anybody except this person that he's created in his, in his mind. I'm so sorry she was taken away. Oh yeah, but don't let her death close you off entirely. Find someone you couldn't be your honest self with, okay? I remember when I was a kid, I got no web design by ripping off sites I liked. All you had to

do was few source on your browser, and there was the code you could copy/paste it, modified a little, put your name on it, and like that, it was your site via source. What if we had that for people? What people really want to see [Music] find someone to be your honest self with [Music] really good at Rice Thanks. What I thought was that at first, when you're watching this, you can't help but feel this is the most alienated man in television, but iconic as I say because it's done in such a great way. Yet when we were talking, I said the thing I want to do is relate to my viewers, and I'm gonna use your words as the main writer/creator of this, even though Elliott is speaking them, a computer hacker with a sense of something wrong with the world that he can't explain. And I cannot help but feel almost everyone on the planet today feels something wrong with the world that they can't explain. Well, yeah, it's not a unique

thing. I don't know if it's about our time or not, but I think the unique thing is, you know, what Elliott senses and what maybe in a modern context, especially sort of Elliott being a hacker and being in, again, society under this, so the technology, you know, utopia that we're in right now, if you want to call it that. There is a striking way that it alienates us, even though it's meant to actually bring, make communication faster. You could speak to anybody across the globe in seconds for free, you know, whereas you couldn't do that 30 years ago. But yet, there's a weird isolationism to it. So, if I can just walk, you know, look at all my relatives' baby pictures on Facebook, I don't actually ever have to go see them. And so, you end up, you end up sort of substituting, you're having this poor substitute for actual human interaction, but online. And that's sort of the alienation that's sort of unique to Eliot, and I think unique to sort of the

modern-day context right now of our world, and I think one of the things that you bring out throughout both seasons is not only what that implies to us socially but all the unintended consequences. That's what this series is also about to a certain extent; it's the unintended consequences of even trying to do what you believe is right. Yeah, and that to me is that, you know, a lot of people call Elliot an antihero in this sort of the golden age of television. There's, you know, that the kind of central characters tend to be these morally ambiguous people who are trying, you know, who have good intentions, but these sort of consequences backfire on them. So then it's about the rubber meets the road. Well, what do you do with those consequences? How do you show up in that point? And that's kind of, you know, the one thing about Mr. Robot this season one. A lot of people felt like, well, the ending of season one, we did the thing. Well, that should be sort

of the end, that's you know the end that would be the end of a movie, you know that you know he set out to hockey Corp, he does it, and there you go, these success. Well, I thought it would be more interesting. No, what would it, what do you do after that? What do you succeed? Are there positive outcomes? And if they're negative, then how do you feel about what you did? And you know, those are kind of the more interesting questions, and I think that's true of any sort of interesting choice of character can make. What is it about society that disappoints you so much? Oh, I don't know. Is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children? Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit, the world itself is just one big hoax spamming each other with our running commentary, both masquerading as insight, our social media faking his intimacy, or is it that we voted for this, not with our rigged

elections, but with their things, our property, our money. I'm not saying anything, then we all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy, but because we want to be sedated, because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards. Society, Eliot, you're not saying anything. What's wrong? Nothing. Well, my son, who turned me on to the show, as I said, he said one thing. You're gonna have to do, Dad, in this particular show, is watch everything, 'cause Sam puts nothing in there that doesn't have some sort of meaning. So I was particularly cautious of that, and I'll never forget this term, and it's used a number of times in the film, called the invisible hand. Now, the invisible hand, I'm assuming you're aware of, is the term by Adam Smith, but it was only mentioned once in The Wealth of Nations. Where it's mentioned twice is in his book called Moral Sentiments, and now you mentioned it three times at least, from as far as I could remember, and I

don't think that that may be coincidence, but the point is the invisible hand only operates when there is a morality, and you make that point here. At first, I thought there was a very anti-anti-lets-meet-leave-him-as-the-anti-guy Eliot, but when you really look at the invisible hand, he's aware that it's not operating properly, but he also knows that something needs to be done to restore the morality, right? Once the morality is restored, then things may play out a little differently. Yeah, his sort of, and I always call it because I look at Elliott in a weird way as sort of, he's got a lot of naivete for as much wisdom that he might have in hacking and finding flaws in human nature, this sort of social engineer his way through problems. There's a lot in the naivete about the world, and he feels like, you know, destroying the system is what's going to help it. Now, whether that's right or wrong in the real world, you know, I don't know, but

interestingly enough that I think he equates capitalism and in your right the invisible hand. I mean, it's all kind of guided by the principle that, you know, we will value the most moral things as a society, will collectively sort of in behind-the-scenes tend to, you know, give more value to the positive things for society and, you know, and kind of subtract the negative things, and that's how the system will work out. The problem is, what if that gets rigged, and that's what Elliott points out. Well, and that, and that fact, that's what's happening, that's what makes it so. I mean, we don't, obviously today, we don't live in a pure capitalist, it's crony capitalism, and that's not even debated. But in Elliott's, in Elliott's world, there is no version where we could have a pure free market, it's always going to be rigged. And so, in that scenario, what do you do, you know? But in Elliott's world, which is where we live and play, there is still an outside.

world, and again, I couldn't help but, in my blessed opinion, think the truly most moral character that we see is Gideon. Yeah, and again, I couldn't help but remember the reference of Gideon himself. And by the way, the company that he runs is all safe, or a kind of a neat play on the words. But he's also, throughout biblical times, his names become anonymous with a small military, a successful elite force defending what's right, right? You know, III love that you catch on to some of these things. III never loved a confirm or deny, but yeah, we definitely take the thing is whenever we name any character, or even pick a color for certain details on for the set or the production design, we always try, and we find that the enriching those things with details are great, and it's a great way to fill out the world and really underline the theme if we take every opportunity to do that. And Gideon is definitely, definitely one of them. You're lying, Elliott speaks it, or mate.

I'm not sure if Elliott speaks this. Hold on, okay, I'll just see it's in the show. Okay, the devil is the strongest when you look the other way. The value is Elliott, okay? And so many people don't realize that. They think that it's there because it's more powerful than you, but no, it's not. It happens because you're looking the other way. You're not acting with virtue, with moral character, and Elliott knows that well. And I think it's a human condition thing, I think, right? I mean, how many times do we witness horror in the world, and how many times do we try and do something about it, even if it's small? I mean, we sometimes revert to the status of, Well, I can't do anything about it, so I let it be. And that's kind of, that's, I think, what Elliott means by looking the other way. I think that all that's always going to sort of be a thing with the, it's, it's

not. It's not. Look. It's the laziness of society. Like, how much will you allow in the world before you actually have to stand up and fight for it? But there's a few themes that also run through, and I'm going to try to get to as many of them. And one of them has to deal with choices and control versus the illusion of control. Control is about as real as a one-legged unicorn taking a leak at the end of a double rainbow. Then what do we have? You know that book if people say about how when you fall, you gotta get out. I reject that. You know why? The whole thing is a fall. They can't help but be a perpetual state of grasping in the dark. It's not about getting up. It's about stumbling. Stumbling in the right direction. It's the only true way to move forward. That is the big theme throughout a large part of this is, are we in control, or is it an illusion of control? And if it's an illusion, you also say, does the illusion

help you get the control, yeah, and that's the question. I mean, clearly, we're not completely in control. We've given up control to a large extent to government and to corporations to run sort of the different, and we're delegating, right? We're delegating certain aspects of our life to either to all these other entities, but we feel like, well, we have a watchful eye. We feel like we have a choice. Well, we can always retract that control, but I think we've hit that point, or maybe we've always been at that point, where no, no, it's not word, and we're not using them to sort of control that aspect there. We're not delegating. They're the ones controlling us. They're the ones using that. Well, then Elliot lets us know, and he says then, and again, I, let's not say Elliot. Let me just say these words that you wrote. And what do we have? Your words, a perpetual state of grasping in the dark. It's not about getting up. It's about

stumbling in the right direction. Maybe we are all just stumbling from the right questions to the wrong answers, or from the right answers to the wrong questions, but you still give us the answer. Just keep stumbling right, and I think I mean that was those said by Ray, the character played by Craig Robinson. It does an amazing job, and I think what he's trying to say there is we have to just do our best, and even if our best doesn't seem that great, even though that with, and it again a reflection on what's going on where we may not know what to believe, and that makes us feel like we're so out of control, we have to keep trying to find that footing. You give us an answer. True courage is being honest about yourself. Probably the hardest thing for each and every one of us to do at the end of the day. The heartbreaking thing is all the honest feelings about you, all this other stuff you're sort of hiding behind, the truth about who, how you feel about

yourself, and we were talking about love before. This is, you know, about loneliness, is about love. Well, it is ultimately about Canali, a final way to love himself. Because I think all of these things that he's going, all of these machinations that he's trying to navigate, ultimately goes back to that point of, I don't know if he loves himself, and that's the scary, that's the honest answer that he needs to courage for. Oh, and you know, there's also another part. As I say, I always look at things, they're soulful and they're spiritual. And I once was given the definition that soulful is when you look inward, spiritual is when you look outward, and you actually have a part where you do a little bit of both. And I want to use your words, you're only seeing what's in front of you, you aren't seeing what's above you. And I thought that was another dilemma that Elliott is facing. He's not almost sure, in fact, here

there's a whole great scene of when he's trying to slow things down, and I'll never forget famous athletes always tell you that you need to move and react fast, but you must slow things down. And the greatest baseball players say they see that ball coming, and they can count the stitches on it because they can slow it down. So, Elliott, in trying to figure out what's above him, what's in front of him, he's doing his best to slow things down, but the world is moving so rapidly. It is, and that gets to, because we talk a lot about religion, and not in a specific way, but in that spiritual way that you're talking about. And it gets to, it's not, you know, not to get into the definition of what God is or what God could be, but Elliott does feel purposeless. I mean, that's how the whole series sort of kicks off. He doesn't feel like he matters. He feels like he's a button-pushing. I think that's that sense.

that there's something wrong in the world, and he is a little lost, and he does need that guiding light. For a lot of people, that is God, but for other people, it's that spiritual connection with the world and how do I fit into it. And that goes back to identity and goes back to finding that sense of purpose. One of the guides you give us is this life is a balancing act, and we're all just doing our best tightrope walking above the pit of ungodly talk about spiritual pain that's daring us to trip up. And again, it's hard to relate to Eliot as a character if you look at him outside of the light of humanity, but once you bring him into the light, which you do so perfectly into our lives, we feel that everyone is feeling that. We're walking this tightrope along with Eliot as he's trying to find the love for himself. We're trying to find that same thing, and we're realizing, gosh darn it, the hardest person to love is

yourself. It's such an absurd. It's an absurdity almost, but it's the deepest truth I know. It's a hundred percent the thing that I think underlines everything about the show and about Eliot's emotional journey, and it is that thing that I think we all relate to the most. It's almost cynical to admit that you love yourself. I think we are being dared every day to not love ourselves, to, you know, to, you know, be either sarcastic or be defensive or gloat about what we have or what we own or who we are. It's very much not encouraged to actually get down and dirty and then appreciate who that person is underneath, and I think that that really is the underpinning of what Elliot is going through in the whole series. Oh, you can feel it, and as I say, because we're in his head, right, you make us feel. One of the things I actually say is because you hit it right on the head. It almost seems egotistical.

to say, Oh, I love myself, I don't mean it even that way, and I know you don't mean it that way either. What I think is if I'd be happy if we could just be a little kinder to ourselves, right? And you and that see in terms of that because I want, you know, the superficial thing or the very surface-level way of kind of trying to solve society's problems, if you even want to call it that, is that people need to be kinder to each other. But I really think it starts there, and I really think that's probably the root of all the problems, and this rise of depression and clinical depression or mental illness stems from that relationship with yourself, absolutely. And on that note, Sam, you're gonna come back. I know we talked about this. You're gonna come back, but I'm gonna end with these words, your words: Find out the future you're fighting for. If you like it, it's beautiful. Thank you, Sam, for giving us such a beautiful series. Thank you so much, my pleasure.

this is a lot of fun, my pleasure, and thank you all for joining us. Now, before Sam leaves, I'd like to leave you with these few more words from Mr. Robot. Every day, we change the world, but to change the world in a way that means anything, that takes more time than most people have. It never happens all at once; it's slow, it's methodical, it's exhausting. We don't all have the stomach for it. I'm Barry Gibb, Rick. Between exhaustion and the pains in our stomach, there is a path to change the world in meaningful ways. Seek it, and you will feel. Thank you, sir. To connect with Barry, like them on Facebook and follow him on Twitter at Barry Camera. And to contact Barry directly, view past episodes of Between the Lines and read his weekly blog. Visit us at BarryKubrick.com. [Music]

The Reality of Mr. Robot | Sam Esmail with Barry Kibrick

The Reality of Mr. Robot | Sam Esmail with Barry Kibrick