Regardless of the project, whenever you're working on something, the best you can hope for is to be around good people.

Even though the topic [of slavery] itself is the big, screaming elephant in the room, we still get a chance to have fun and enjoy what is on the screen, and we have moments where we're actually happy.

Even afterwards when you go through a scene and then step off, sometimes you need a minute to just decompress.

When my brother was a child, he kept telling my mom he wanted to be in the box. She didn't get it - he was two or three years old and kept saying he wanted to be in the box. She finally realized he was talking about the television.

My mom experienced racism. She was harassed by the KKK several times. And I experienced racism myself, growing up. In New Jersey, we had trash thrown on our lawn every day. And we had the lines to our Christmas lights cut three years in a row. We just stopped putting up Christmas lights after that. That's probably why I still don't put up any lights during the holidays.

You go home happy, you go to work happy, you make a better project because everybody loves it and loves each other.

I'd like to think that in any circumstance I'd say, "You know what? Screw this. Kill me. I'm done. I'm not going to grovel."