I'm trying to steal from everybody. So yeah, there's cats that I'm personally affiliated with - Carl Franklin, Paul Thomas Anderson - and others that I don't know personally but their work I'm a big admirer of, like Martin Scorsese. But I'm hoping to come up with a language that is mine, that's specific to my take on this material.

I think if you were to look at my resume in total you would see a lot of things that are kind of all over the map.

I've never been a part of a film before that offers such a platform into real issues, that raises social awareness and has the potential to change things.

I prefer film to TV because of the amount of time film affords you that TV doesn't (though theater is probably my favorite and the scariest place of all).

I imagine it was much different in the 1970s. That was the Renaissance for black actors, albeit in blaxploitation movies. There was a much greater preponderance of work then than there is now.

Speak up when you're supposed to, as opposed to trying to write prescriptions for the way people should live.

If you look up and no one who's around you has been around you for the past 20 years, and they're all new people, I think that's a problem.