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

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.

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 want my work to always be hopeful, in the end. You're giving me two hours, and, in Shots Fired's case, 10 hours of your life. I don't want you to ever leave something I've done feeling worse than when you came in. I hope the work can be aspirational, and aspirational doesn't have to be corny at all.

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.

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 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.