I was a little girl with a pot belly and Afro puffs, hyperactive and overdramatic, and I found the theater and I found my home.

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.

Rise above the way society is going to see you and society is going to see you at the absolutely bottom of the totem pole because not only are you female, you are Black. Never believe it and never give into that, that that's where you live or that's who you are.

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

I'm taking opportunities as they come; I really am. Not to get too sort of mystical, but I believe in fate. I believe when roles are presented to me in my life they're for a very specific reason, something for me to learn. And it's coming at the right time.

I've had to play characters who I absolutely disagree with, as far as their politics, as far as their religion, and their stance on certain social issues, I completely disagree with them. But I have to go in and find who they are and get to their core, into their truth, and have absolute faith and believe in that, in order to portray it. So you have to walk in a lot of different shoes, in that you can't help but have your mind open as a result of that.

Music was all over my house, and all over literally my genetic house, and my house in the literal sense. So I kind of couldn't avoid it.