With ‘Upload,’ Greg Daniels Takes a Leap Into the Great Unknown – The New York Times

VANCOUVER, British Columbia — The new Amazon series “Upload” was in its final week of shooting last May, and Greg Daniels was chewing on everything he could get his hands on, including his hands. Time was waning, and the set — a convincing facsimile of a claustrophobic Queens apartment — was tricky to navigate. Daniels, the series’s creator, watched a monitor as the crew worked the tight spaces and the director shouted commands.

He chewed his gum. Cut! — another take, please. He chewed his fingers. Cut! — let’s try again. He leapt from his chair, consulted the crew and came back chewing his thumb. Cut! — one more time for safety.

“At least I get to sit back and let her direct,” Daniels said, nodding to the episode’s director, Daina Reid, which was maybe half-true. He had complete faith in his directors, he emphasized, but this was a passion project three decades in the making. There wasn’t much actual sitting back.

“It’s hard not to micromanage,” he admitted.

Perhaps more than “Parks and Recreation,” which Daniels cocreated, and more than the American version of “The Office,” which Daniels developed and oversaw, “Upload” is his baby, based on an idea he conceived as a writer for “Saturday Night Live” in the late 1980s.