Algumas outras citações relevantes vêm de esta entrevista com o show de corredor Patrick Somerville:
Patrick Somerville, who wrote all 10 episodes of the drama, told The Hollywood Reporter that this bleak vision of New York was foundational to how he and new James Bond director Cary Joji Fukunaga approached Maniac.
"One of the first conversations Cary and I had about the show was about the representation of reality — not just the delusional landscapes, but the actual reality of the show — being a little off, and a little heightened. We knew that we wanted to have this absurdist tone where anything is possible, but the emotional stakes were relatable. To me, it's our zeitgeist, but it's just a different history of technology. It's the universe where Betamax won and Steve Jobs got hit by a bus, or where a number of arbitrary things led to a slightly different series of events between the early 1980s and now."
que parece sugerir que este é um dia presente divergente.
In one standout absurdist moment in this wonky New York, a tour guide points out a winged "Statue of Extra Liberty" across the water (seen above). "New York needed more liberty!" Somerville joked, before offering a clarification. "I saw some people writing about it, and that is actually not the harbor. The camera is pointing north in that shot, so in the Maniac world, the Statue of Liberty still exists, and the Statue of Extra Liberty also exists. Someone decided that we needed another one."