When I was asked to change Laurel into a Latina for How to Get Away with Murder, I was terrified, because I thought, no one's going to know how to do this because the American take on my culture is never accurate.

[Rhimes and Pete Nowalk] have definitely, from the pilot [of How to Get Away with Murder], brought forth a woman who is unapologetically herself, unapologetically flawed, and is as vulnerable as she is powerful. I'm grateful to be in that family.

There's not enough of those inclusive projects where I feel like I'm interpreting a human being and not just a statistic or a nationality.

I knew that [director/screenwriter] Catalina Aguilar Mastretta had an amazing take on the female psyche and the modern woman and the modern immigrant woman living in the U.S., and I really saw the need for a story told of our daily lives without being a statistic and without just trying to hit a demographic, and I felt that with this one.

I guess that storytelling would be for me to keep making art that touches people in a way that nothing else can.

I tell [scriptwriters] I think [their scripts] has too many stereotypes, that even the way they come in and out of Spanish doesn't really make sense, it feels forced.

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.