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.

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.

That's why Serena Williams is such a hero for me, because she's got such incredible swagger, and it's earned, and she can teach us that it is a good thing. The fact that she has been denigrated and called cocky - I mean, she's the best in the world! I hope my work can inspire other women to have that swagger and believe that they can have it all.

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

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.

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.