I think the notion that we are different just because of skin color, and that we should be kept apart or kept from interbreeding, is very hurtful.

When I am playing a role far away from me with an accent that is not mine I always employ a dialect coach. I am almost always playing someone that has an accent that is not mine.

Africa is trying to find its way back to a sense of itself, when much of that was lost through colonization.

Because I was aspirational, I did my work, I was respectful to my teachers, I experienced a lot of bullying from the black kids. My friends were largely white or Asian.

I know I had my equivalents in Adrian Lester and Lenny James when I was at drama school. I remember David Harewood doing 'Othello' at the National, and Adrian Lester having done Cheek by Jowl's famous 'As You Like It and Company' at the Donmar. Not necessarily performances I saw, but just the fact they happened was massively encouraging.

As you know, Sunday at 11 o'clock is the most segregated hour in America. You have black churches; you have white churches; you have Hispanic churches. It's not really reflective of the world we live in, by and large, in America.

I know that there is still a lot of bitterness and anger, and arguably justifiably so, when you think about how brutal slavery was and what its brutal legacy still is.