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.

I knew I wanted to make a movie that looked decadent and expensive. I knew we would have to make every penny stretch and put as much of the budget onscreen as possible. So it starts with your heads of departments - your production designer, costume, hair and makeup designers. Picking the right people who were as committed as I was to telling the story as I was.

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.

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.

There are important differences that mean we appreciate each other, not tolerate each other. Race creates this idea that there's this massive difference. So when you use race as a means to explore politics, it's a very interesting way of looking at difference, yet similarities.

If you unite a couple on a joint fight, the question is, "Does it unite them literally, or does it weaken their love?" And if it weakens their love, is that true love? And if this is true love, then you know they should be united by their separation. It's their fight that brings them emotionally together while they're physically separated, and so, though there's physical separation, there is mental and emotional closeness.

You can take me and then you can take a blond white man with blue eyes, and you could say, "Fundamentally, they're different." And then I could talk to that white guy about the first time he lost someone close to his heart, and I could tell him about the first time I lost someone close to my heart, and I can guarantee you that at least 70 percent of the experienced feelings will be similar. We are human beings.