I'm an artist at heart.

I can only speak as an American, but most journalism here isn't doing its job any more. It's about selling stuff.

What's interesting is, most of the people who are fans of the The Wire who black people or cops... most of the people in the industry are the crew: writers, actors and directors. And so they understand what it is that we do, so they think, "Wow, what a incredible group of amazing actors." It's funny, I think there are a couple of reasons why we have never gotten any nomination for anything except for writing.

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!

I'm an artist at heart.

As I got further into my career, as a character of color, if I was going to have the types of opportunities I felt I deserved, and continue to have them, I was going to have to start creating those opportunities for myself.

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