It was also incredibly serendipitous that I would later learn I shared a birthday with Whoop [Goldberg ]. I went on to be inspired by many other artists and forms of art, and was soon directed to a place that would help harness my experiences and develop my voice within the craft, LaGuardia High School of Performing Arts in New York City.

I did my homework, of course, by inhaling as much literature as was available to find, so that when it was time to shoot I could hopefully exhale [ Harriet Tubman ].

I am indebted to [my grandmothers] always for cradling me in the heart of Christ and encouraging my passion to press towards the mark of the high calling on my life, wherever that takes me.

[Harriet Tubman] lived such a full, complex, and irrefutably-dynamic life that all the craft in the world would be insufficient in honoring her legacy.

There will be a wealth of facts revealed and revisited in [Underground] pertaining to Harriet Tubman. That is a huge part of my excitement, the fact that this generation will get such a beautifully-detailed introduction to a hero and icon that has largely lived in a few pages of our history books and in one-dimensional photographs.

Harriet Tubman is the perpetuation of a "Super Soul Sunday" every day. Learning about her and the layers of her helps you to see that the same woman who holds a gun and an axe felt feelings for a man.

Thank God for Canada! In the context of this narrative [in Underground] and beyond, Canada was certainly an additional option for the many traveling the treacherous terrain of the Underground Railroad in pursuit of what was perceived as "freedom."