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."

What I do feel with the different scripts that they give me where I feel like this is done for one of those reasons, I share my point of view. I don't just say, "No, thank you." I say, "I feel that this represents Latinos in a wrong way, in a bad way."

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 felt really strongly about this script [ Everybody Loves Somebody] because, like you said, it's a very specific way of life.

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.

I would get very frustrated reading scripts that were bilingual but maybe not bicultural.

[Producers] promised me they wouldn't do that sort of "defining nature of my character is that Laurel is Latina [in How to Get Away with Murder] ." It has nothing to do with that. She just happens to be a Latina.