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.

My parents put me in sports when I was 5 years old, and they put my sisters in sports. So that's what I grew up with, that mentality: "It's OK to want to be the best. Aggression is good." You have to have that little walk on the court or down the track. I love to put that into my female characters, because I don't think enough girls are taught that at a young age.

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.

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.

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

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.