[Everybody Loves Somebody] one really loves both cultures, represents them in a very accurate, genuine, authentic, fun, fresh way, and it includes so many more people because it has that language aspect to it.

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.

I also really pay attention to whether the script embodies a full female character or if they're just wanting a two-dimensional objectified woman. So I also have that aspect to take care of as well.

I told my friend - we were working on a movie together - and he gave me a script and asked me to give him notes. And they were all male characters, and I said, "You know what would make this character more interesting?" And he asked what - and it's this road trip between three guys, basically, one older man, one 30-year-old and a 13-year-old mechanic. And I said, "If you make the 13-year-old a girl, and you make her an Indian-American mechanic." And he said, "What do you mean?" And I said, "Yeah, don't change anything in the script about him, and just make it a her."

Our society really needs to take a better look at what we're selling, because I think women being empowered will be as beneficial to men as it is to us.

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'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.