My father had a lot to do with me thinking about acting, though he never saw me act. He passed away probably - he passed away as I was doing my first play, but I just think being exposed to it and being around it. It wasn't something that I ever thought I couldn't do because I grew up around it.

So many Muslims would tell you that they felt like that you had to - you fold it into yourself because people were looking at you and recognizing you as being the culprit even though, look, I'm American. I don't believe that the teachings of Islam justified those actions.

I've personally been on the outside sometimes. But I was - I personally was never persecuted especially in the way in which sharing my own experiences.

When it finally came my way and doors opened up for me to do it and to be on stage, it felt like a natural thing to try out. And it just so happened to speak to me. I really couldn't do what I needed to do in the most fulfilling way in Hayward, Calif., or in the Bay Area, that it required me to go off to NYU.

When we kind of get caught up in the minutiae, the details that make us all different, I think there's two ways of seeing that. There's an opportunity to see the texture of that person, the characteristics that make them unique. And then there's an opportunity to go to war about it and to say that that person is different from me and I don't like you, so let's battle.

At the end of the day we're all spirits having a physical experience.

I think how strict my mother's home could be with my mom and my stepfather, there was a fluidity and freedom in my dad's existence that I enjoyed when I was around him, though the responsibility was just different. He expected me to carry myself a certain way without all the rules and confines.