I knew that if I wanted to be all I could be, I would have to go to the US. It took three years to get the accent right.

I was cast in 'Thor' and I'm cast as a Nordic god. If you know anything about the Nords, they don't look like me but there you go. I think that's a sign of the times for the future. I think we will see multi-level casting. I think we will see that, and I think that's good.

There's the argument that you can relate to someone who's completely unrelatable. In the way that a director shows you his imagination on a film, then I get to show you my imagination in a big dumb character.

Africans, we hold on to our youths and whip them into shape.

I lived in America for a long time before I started working as an actor. Some actors show up on set and have never done an American accent before, so they rely on a slew of technical mechanisms. Part of what makes an accent is understanding why people speak that way - you have to understand the culture.

There has been a big debate about it: can a black man play a Nordic character?

Are there differences between black actors’ opportunities and white actors’ opportunities? Yes, there are. It’s been said.