I do what I love to do. I have awesome people who let me make the choices I want to make. I navigate things by whether I want to play a part or not, to be honest.

That's one of my favorite songs of all time. It's so beautiful. It's an old song, sung by Nina Simone. This is the Cat Power cover. We pushed hard to get it and were lucky. It's so stunning.

I feel so lucky to have the opportunity to make the show, and that it is in alignment with what I'm interested in, with what I read about. For me, it just felt like an organic step - of course, I'm thinking I want a show that allows for more representation for the community and shows the struggles people face, especially when we're hearing all this political rhetoric - to have a way to show how much this affects people lives.

Climate change that is occurring right now is causing so much suffering all around the world. Whether it's adding 30 million people to the "at risk of starvation" list in 2008, whether it's the floods in Pakistan, or entire cultures at risk of disappearing, or desertification in Africa - all these things that are currently being caused by climate change. I think it's something that a lot of people want to figure out: how to make the shift, how to help. It seems like such an overwhelming problem.

I want to make activism a bigger part of my life, while hopefully maintaining the opportunity to help out causes that I really care about. And being an actor allows me to do that. Shooting a Cisco commercial allows me to do that. I mean, doing all these things allows me to talk about these issues. But don't think there aren't those moments where I'm like, "What am I doing? I have to quit my job and chain myself to a tree." Believe me, I have those moments.

I've been in a few movies that really have the tendency to polarize people, and I kind of like that. I kind of like anything that pushes people's buttons. People will always take things as they want, and project stuff on it - it's just kind of what people do. Whether it's violence or teen pregnancy, whatever.

It's weird because here I am, an actress, representing - at least in some sense - an industry that places crushing standards on all of us. Not just young people, but everyone. Standards of beauty. Of a good life. Of success. Standards that, I hate to admit, have affected me.