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

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.

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

Even if someone doesn't look like you or you don't know people like this in your real life, you get to know them and you get to see their humanity and you get to empathize with them. Our hope is that through empathy that can spark change. We hope people start talking to each other and our show sparks conversation because we need to start talking to each other, not at each other.

In film school, I knew I wanted to be a director, but I found out pretty damn quickly that nobody was just going to hand me a script to direct.

Be passionate about your [movie] material, because you're going to have to overcome a lot of "No's," and it's that passion that fuels the fight.