The authentic Gullah dialect is actually very clipped, and so it would sound almost Jamaican and be very odd to an American audience's ears. It's not the typical Southern dialect that we're used to.

The only thing I've ever wanted to do in my entire life is to be on Broadway.

I want to thank all the shoulders of the strong and brave and courageous women that I am standing on.

Pedigree matters: if you break your shoulder trying to open a door, it's much harder to play the game once you get in the room.

You feel the communion of the collective consciousness in that moment when you're on stage doing something and the audience is absolutely with you. And the audience becomes a collective entity as well. They come in from separate places and socio-economic backgrounds, and places across the world and days that they've had, and then they come together and they become one collective thing, and experience something in a collective way.

It's easy to spend - especially in this day and age - to spend your time not being in the present. It's very easy to be way ahead. What's tomorrow and the day after that?

I think it's absolutely essential to encourage creativity. I think we come in as these wide-eyed sponges, ready to create and absorb and evolve, and I think more often than not we are squashed, the older we get.