This is 2003, 2004. And then I started - after the Patriot Act, I would always get my financial packages in the mail and they would just be opened. And it was like, what is going on here?

I played all four years [at St. Mary's College] with - at a certain point, basketball became the thing I was doing most, but it was really in my periphery.

My parents were kids when I was born. My mother was 16. My father was 17, and they got married in high school. And they split a few years later. When they split was when all that was happening also, and he - they were just coming into themselves. But they remained friends.

It felt like it disrupted my rhythm in growing up. But I will say that I'm really grateful for [my mother's] own personal transition.

Isaiah the prophet, Isaiah's second son was - his symbolic name was Mahershalalhashbaz. And Isaiah was - the Prophet Isaiah was instructed to write the name in all capital letters as a prophecy. And it means hasten to the spoils, speedy as the prey.

What inspires me today is a desire to get closer to an understanding of what my artistic capacities are with the hope of organically sharing my gifts with an audience in the most heightened way I possibly can.

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.