It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then.

Especially as a director on 'West Wing,' I directed a lot of different things in a lot of different ways and really stretched my wings.

For 'Game of Thrones,' I realized immediately that it was about the characters.

My experience on 'The West Wing' was, I think, now rare in that I was pretty young, and I walked into this environment where Aaron Sorkin was giving me a script every week, and Thomas Schlamme and John Wells were keeping the studio off my back, at least as best as they could.

I knew with The West Wing that that wasn't going to be for very long, that I was just the red herring.

'Game of Thrones' is shot on a very similar kind of schedule to a TV show, but there's a lot more time and focus put into the script.