As people of color, we're left out of history. History is sort of told around us. We're bystanders, we're passive, we're observers. We're never the center of our history.

Don't let a culture or society's rules define who you are; you define who you are.

As people of color, we're left out of history. History is sort of told around us. We're bystanders, we're passive, we're observers. We're never the center of our history.

The reality is that we’re in very politicized times. The complete antithesis of Obama is Trump. We are in very polarized times. People are taking a very strong view after a period of time, I think, where people fell asleep on politics to a certain extent.

I'm a girl, and I celebrate being a girl, and it was really important to me to celebrate the beauty that I could create in a movie like the one I did, aesthetically, in terms of the costumes and the production design. I wanted something big and lush and beautiful and unashamedly feminine.

When you're in political times, you want to reflect those political times, and sometimes going back to our past is the best way to look at our present.

What I wanted to do was put a woman of color, front and center, in my movie combining a lot of themes that were relevant to both men and women. I actively wanted her to carry the weight of this movie because I'm a woman. And I actively wanted to explore many of the issues that affected her as a woman of color. That was very important to me. And although these issues affect some women of color, I don't think they're only of interest to women of color. They're of universal interest.