'The Wire' really drew on a lot of real-life situations and real-life organizations - it created fiction to make a social statement about reality.

I'm an artist at heart.

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

In drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.

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

I did an Off-Broadway show that was a comedy written by Ann Meara. We were like a family, and we did that show for a year. On Oz, I did feel like the cast members were friends and there was a lot of bonding. That said, there was a lot of testosterone. Once again, it was full of really intense theater actors with this writing that was really intricate and subtle.

Art is art, and journalism is journalism.