I also have to be careful of what it says about women. I get a lot of scripts that only talk about women's appearances and what they look like. I think we're tired of having to meet this standard and not being asked what our talents or abilities are.

There's a lot of lies out there that we should catch and that have taken me a lot of time to sort of see, and reading up on it and getting educated on it. I'm reading a book that's about how images of beauty have hurt women along the decades. It's a very educating but infuriating thing to see, how we don't have equal opportunity because they're demanding so much more.

I think, especially with this show [How to Get Away with Murder], we have Viola Davis and Pete Nowalk as the showrunner.

I've been transformed by stories, and I think that storytelling is definitely sacred. I take it very seriously because my life has been changed, whether it was a movie, a play, a piece of writing, poetry, a painting.

Until they hired a Latina to write for Laurel [in How to Get Away with Murder], I was scared that she was going to fall into stereotypes.

[The main character] is in a forever-growing process. I feel the movie [everybody Loves Somebody] did that very well and not finishing off as "a woman's life ends when she finds the right guy".

I feel that the power that storytelling has to change people, to bring them together, to have that cathartic sort of experience, is something that definitely has helped my life be worthwhile and better.