Understanding that what it is that you're doing isn't limited to the roles and the rejection, it's bigger than that, it's about your purpose in life.

The show [Shots Fired] is an autopsy of our criminal justice system, a space where the conversation surrounding the issues in our country is offering a seat at the table to all the voices to be heard, a murder mystery, and grassroots look at our own humanity as we move through the parts and pieces of the story.

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 didn't have strategy meetings or a movement behind her, she was the movement, she was inspired by being sick and tired of the injustice she was experiencing and she knew she had a right to liberty or death, one or the other she was going to have by any means necessary.

Rosa Parks was primed, she had the Civil Rights Movement behind her, she didn't just decide to sit on the bus, it was strategic.

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.

Study and know that we are always a student of the craft well after we've completed any course of study... and approach the work as a servant, not a star.