With any good projects, I feel like the off-screen chemistry factors on-screen. It's great when you don't have to force it, but when it's not there you better focus on getting there, because as we live with these characters we spend more time with one another than we do our families at home.

I'm always ready and willing to just keep pushing and working and going because it's in my spirit.

The time frame and how people treated each other was upsetting, but what's great about this story is that they really focus on the strengths of these people and the strengths of the culture, of who these Americans were. That, actually, is uplifting.

I enjoy being surprised.

With any good projects, I feel like the off-screen chemistry factors on-screen. It's great when you don't have to force it, but when it's not there you better focus on getting there, because as we live with these characters we spend more time with one another than we do our families at home.

It's crazy how intelligent kids can be at a very young age and how they know what they know. I came out of the womb drawing on everything; I used to draw on my mother's white furniture and her white walls with her red lipstick and my pencils. Little did she know that would later materialize into me doing what I do now - I'm a painter as well and a micromechanical engineer.

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.