HFPA journalist Ana Maria Bahiana sat down with writer/director Kenneth Lonergan at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills.  They talked about his new miniseries, Howards End, based on the novel by E.M. Forster.“I wasn’t familiar with the book,’ he said. ‘ I had tried to read it when I was younger and failed so I really was approaching it pretty fresh and I guess the challenge was in a way the challenge was not how to get it into four episodes but how to compress it into four episodes because it’s such a rich book that in a way it could have worked perfectly well with  six or even eight episodes possibly.”

In this in-depth interview we took a dive into Lonergan’s career, the numerous plays he’s written and working with Martin Scorsese on Gangs of New York during his honeymoon.“They called me and said can you go to Rome in two weeks and start rewriting Gangs Of New York and I said well, I just got married, I don’t know but I love the project and I love the material and I love Marty,’ he told us.  ‘So, yeah, my wife and I just got on a plane and flew to Rome and I had a meeting.  I went directly from the airport to Scorsese’s house outside of Rome and sat there with Scorsese, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and Harvey Weinstein and I was so intimidated that I just laughed.  I had to laugh.  I collapsed immediately so I wasn’t scared anymore because it was so comical how intimidated I was.”

Lonergan also tells how working with Casey Affleck affected his character in Manchester by the Sea and has advice for aspiring writers looking for success.

Listen to the conversation here or, for immediate access to all of our podcasts, subscribe to HFPA in Conversation on iTunes.