I started acting, almost on a whim to help my music career.

The African American community is so under-served in the entertainment industry.

When you're in a high-stress situation, dynamics between people can change.

I mean, you know actors, we always want to do something else, something different.

I was coming from a theater background. I had an obsession with classic film and cool, interesting, intelligent television. I didn't really understand the way the mainstream television industry worked. I just thought "The wire is so good that it's going to be a huge hit, and we'll get awards up the yin-yang forever." That's what I thought!

Notes are tricky in an audition, because I find, more often than not, my instinct is right. If they have a preconceived notion about the role and it goes against my instinct, unless it makes sense to me, it often throws off what I'm trying to do. Though sometimes they have an insight that I don't because they've been living with the script. I don't have one feeling or another about notes, but it is always a little bit of a red alert when I get one in an audition.

Most of the characters I'd played were so different from me, so far from me that I had to transform.