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

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.

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

My parents are amazing. When I said I wanted to go into film, they didn't understand it, but they were incredibly supportive. But growing up, I absolutely did have that feeling of, "Wow, somebody just gave me up." That was infused in The Secret Life of Bees too - the protagonist wanting unconditional love from her dead but much-imagined mother.

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

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed.

I write to music, and Nina Simone is always on my playlist to write to. I mean, shes inspiring. She's truthful and real and raw.