It's crazy how intelligent kids can be at a very young age and how they know what they know.

I want to give people jobs and put them on great shows. I want to create careers for people.

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.

Now, I actually have to a degree, a responsibility to ensure that it doesn't happen again.' I felt pride. When you're up there [in the noose] it does give you pause but I'm no stranger to degradation and dehumanization. I felt a lot of pride to be a part of showing something like this because a lot of people don't know and haven't been exposed to these types of historical experiences until they see it depicted on our show [Underground].

I remember my mom had a conversation with Sam Jackson about what she should do with our careers and what the next step should be; I was eight and my brother was nine. He said, "You need to get them on Broadway."

It's crazy how intelligent kids can be at a very young age and how they know what they know.

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.