When you say cultural icon, I scrunch my nose.

For film, you know, the Tarantinos and Nolans of the world who are very focused on a certain kind of film aesthetic and a certain kind of presentation, to be honest, that comes from a place of privilege. It comes from a place of always having access to such, but when you ain't never - you can't see it because you can't even get to it.

In addition to that, we have a woman post-production supervisor, a woman colorist, a woman first AD, a woman production supervisor... I think it's really sad when I hear so many shows are content to stay in a mono-cultural realm, not realizing how they are subtracting from their own greatness by not inviting women and people of color into the space - that seasoning that makes the recipe even more great. It was absolutely imperative for me. It's how I run all my crews.

Film school was a privilege I could not afford.

More people have seen 13th on Netflix than have seen all my films put together between the Sundance winners and Selma, and the whole international distribution of film.

Most of us think prison is a place where bad people go - which is what I thought for a long time - until you really start to look inside the system and you see, this is not right.

These are dark times for a lot of people who believe differently than our incoming administration [of Donald Trump], but there's also joy there, and there's also something in unifying around the things that we do believe in.