Howard Gordon‘s latest Golden Globe nomination, which he earned Monday morning for his Netflix limited series The Beast in Me, is a serendipitous twist of fate on several fronts, starting with the fact that the series reunited him with Homeland star Claire Danes — and it probably wouldn’t have happened without her.

“I met Daniel [Pearle, who served as a writer and executive producer on the series], ironically, through Claire. He did a play that became a movie that Claire was in, and they became very good friends. I met him on the season finale of Homeland in Morocco. He was just visiting her. Anyway, longer term, when I did Accused three years later, his name crossed my desk. I said, ‘Oh, I think that’s Claire’s friend,’” Gordon recalled while speaking with Deadline after receiving news of his nomination. “He started with the [Accused episode] with Billy Porter. That was the first one he wrote. He just knocked it out of the park, and then he wrote, oh my gosh, a bunch…I made him my co-showrunner in the second year, and then Beast in Me was kind of an extension of that creative relationship.”

In addition to the series’ nomination for Best Television Limited Series, Anthology Series or Motion Picture Made for Television, Beast in Me also delivered acting nominations for Danes and her co-star Matthew Rhys. Funnily enough, the latter’s household is probably quite a celebratory one this morning as his wife and former The Americans co-star Keri Russell was also nominated for a Golden Globe for her work in Season 3 of Netflix’s The Diplomat.

On The Diplomat, Russell works with creator (and former Homeland writer) Debora Cahn. Gordon calls all of the nominations crossover “wonderful,” telling Deadline that he’s always been a fan of Cahn in particular. “I’m really happy for her,” he adds.

The Beast in Me is somewhat of a departure from much of Gordon’s other work. First and foremost, it is not a political drama, which have eaten up much of Gordon’s professional life from 24 to Homeland. The series follows Danes as a reclusive author who has retreated from public life after the death of her young son. She finds an unlikely subject for a new book when a strange man, played by Rhys, moves in next door.

The series is also only eight episodes, which is one of the shortest orders of television that Gordon has ever worked on thus far.

Asked whether he would return to the limited series format in the future, he replied: “You know, I have to say yes…obviously doing something like 24, which is almost unimaginable at this point, but especially on the old network schedules, you could never even imagine to know where the story was going on a serialized show, and even 12 is a fairly tall order to sort of have a to keep in your head the architecture of it. I don’t know how else to say it, but somehow it bends out of shape. But eight felt like a very, very legible, digestible — and, again, you don’t know everything, but you sort of have a general idea of where you want to go. So I really did. I liked it a lot. I was even surprised to see how much I would enjoy an audience, getting to see it all in one sitting. That was a very new experience for me on this side of the table.”

However, Gordon also concedes that there are drawbacks to the shorter episodic orders, and one problem in particular that he understands might be exacerbated by the current direction the entertainment industry is moving.

Amid a joyous day for Golden Globe nominees, there is a grey cloud hanging over Hollywood as the industry tries to make sense of the current acquisition war over Warner Bros. Discovery. Late last week, Netflix offered the highest bid for the legacy company’s studio and streaming divisions (WB, HBO and HBO Max), which WBD accepted, but by Monday morning Paramount and its newly minted CEO David Ellison had launched a hostile takeover for the entire company, including the news division and others that are meant to be spun off next year.

“It’s a moment in society, obviously also a moment in history, for sure, but in this business and with the contraction, I mean, I have to say, my overall concern, I hope that we address it structurally, is that the downside of some of these shorter orders is that I think young showrunners, to be the next generation, I don’t think they’ve had the experience yet to do it,” he said. “As archaic as the old system was — when I say old system longer seasons and you really just got to do spend more time on one show — I really, really hope that, as a community, we can find ways to make sure that people get the proper experience from beginning to end of a show. As for the consolidation, it’s scary. I think change like this is super scary, and it has been scary since the legacy business model was disrupted so profoundly. So I think we’ve not yet seen the dust settle and the implications of the new of the reordering of the business.”

And while he did very much enjoy the structure of the limited series for The Beast in Me, that doesn’t mean that the story can’t continue. In fact, the showrunner tells Deadline that, as with most titles these days (perhaps another sign of the times), there is always room to expand.

“It’s a conversation,” he revealed. “But it really is a limited…this was really designed to be a beginning, middle and end, and everything else is just kind of, at the moment, just speculative.”

When he last spoke with Deadline, Gordon teased that the continuation is possibly, because “whoever is left standing at the end of this is still around, and I think if there’s a story, we’d be up for it; I do think that there’s certainly room for another chapter.”

While he waits for those conversations and, potentially, the future of Hollywood to sort themselves out, Gordon says he’ll be celebrating his Golden Globe nomination “as I always do.”

“With a martini and some laughs, and [to] see if I still fit into my tux,” he chuckles.