People talk about Jim Crow as if it's dead. Jim Crow isn't gone. It's adjusted. Look at the disproportionate sentences meted out to blacks caught up in the criminal justice system. There's a problem when people profit from putting and keeping African Americans in prison. We need to do a better job as a nation understanding the real values the country's built upon in terms of fairness, equality and equal opportunity.

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

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

A subject I'm particularly passionate about is the criminal justice system and almost all of the policies that impact people's lives are determined on a local level.

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.