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.

My mother is an ordained minister. I'm a Muslim. She didn't do backflips when I called her to tell her I converted 17 years ago. But I tell you now, we put things to the side, and I was able to - I'm able to see her. She's able to see me. We love each other.

It was really a focus on how to in some ways keep moving in this direction towards something that allowed me to express myself in a way that sports didn't.

I became more curious about the story behind the story [in the House of Cards]. So what was really going on behind the headline? And it's a little bit sad that that show, it doesn't seem so much like entertainment the way it did back when we started doing it.

I grew up in church. My mom's a minister, and my grandmother was an ordained minister. I was always very mindful of the presence of a greater being I call God.

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 didn't have the passion for athletics in that way, that there were other parts of me that felt under-served and that needed to be nurtured and needed my energy.