Working with Netflix and Amazon – it’s all about creative freedom, right? Just ask Ricky Gervais, who said the freedom to do what he want was one of the reasons he made Special Correspondents with Netflix.

Well, not all the time, if Whit Stillman’s experience is anything to go by.

The Last Days of Disco director, who shot a pilot for the Chloë Sevigny comedy drama The Cosmopolitans for Amazon, said: “It’s funny, because the way they promote them now, they say, ‘Oh they give people all this freedom and it’s such a relief, it’s just freedom, freedom, freedom.’ It was a great experience, but freedom? They were on top of absolutely everything. Everything is a conversation.”

Stillman, whose new film is the Jane Austen adaptation Love & Friendship, told the new issue of Sight & Sound magazine: “It turned out to be great, but I’d never had any experience like that before.”