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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.