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.

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

I was so fortunate to get the opportunity to be a writers' apprentice on A Different World. It was my favorite show. So to go from watching Dwayne and Whitley to writing for Dwayne and Whitley was incredible.

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 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'm very shy. But as a director and especially a female director, absolutely: How I used to walk on the court is how I walk on set. And I have to - I mean, I'm controlling 150, 200 people, and everything is on me.

Growing up the way I did, it was tough being one of only a few black people in the town and in school. What my upbringing got me is never feeling completely safe emotionally. Never knowing when something racial was going to pop off based on how I look. So that's something I've carried with me personally and is reflected in my work.