What we were most hoping to achieve with Shots Fired: empathy for all of the characters and conversations about our criminal justice system, which is broken on every level, from the street all the way up to the highest level of government.

I thought that the R&B / Hip-Hop world really hasn't been explored on film and there's some issues that we're going through right now. It's in a very dangerous place , for women especially, both in terms of the songs that men are singing about. You know, R&B used to be a safe place for women and now it just seems like the songs coming out are so angry but also what women have to come out with. You have to get noticed. You see, it's like a script to follow. You come out hyper sexualized but what happens when you can't pull back from that. That's not authentic to yourself.

I want us to have it all, love and career. It's a struggle sometime to achieve that, but I love the struggle.

Sports also teaches you that it's about the team, and the better your teammates are, the better they make you.

I grew up with white parents and until after college, it was a lot of confusion, especially because I grew up in an all-white area. So I never looked around and saw anyone who looked like me.

When killings of black by policeman happen, there's the victim, there's the family, there are the police, there are the politicians, and there is the community. Everybody is affected. Everybody has a point of view. We really wanted to dig into that and get to know all these different people that are changed by it.

I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.