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

Anyone who grew up in the crack era - you know, I grew up in that era - knew that there were also people out - and there are still guys to this day that are out there, you know, obviously drug dealing - but those were the guys who had access and had money. And some of those guys felt responsible to create opportunity for other people and were also aware of the dangers of their work and often aren't really the ones that are encouraging kids to get into drug dealing.

I feel like [terrorism] acts are un-Islamic. So to see that happen and somebody do that in the name of God, it just - and the religion that you practice, it just - it hurts your heart so deeply because it's such a misrepresentation of the faith.

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.

The freedom that I wanted as a kid would - probably would not have been good for me and not in the way in which I wanted it.

I do think that there are people who are able to connect with and empathize with anyone who is going through something difficult, just naturally. I don't think it's a world of effort for everyone.

When you graduate is when you start to find yourself looking at the information in the audition breakdown and it says tall black African - or African-American built such and such. And you start seeing these character descriptions and seeing that, oh, you're only going in for the ones that are described as your look.