I think chemistry and great acting go hand-in-hand.

A lot of those old ideas are dying with the people who created them, and there's this new generation of filmmaker that's saying, "We're in this together, these are issues that we all deal with, let's just present issues to screen without bias and figure out what the audience has to say about them."

Every day I'm reassessing what I've been taught against what I see, and the man I need to be if I'm going to call myself a leader of anybody.

When I was young, to have a big nose, big lips or dark skin was the worst. You were the wretched.

Far too often scripts are being written with race in mind, but the subject matter doesn't lend itself to any conversation on race. I applaud Jesse [Zwick] for having the courage to say, this [About Alex] just a story about friends, and they could be anyone. There's no specific color that forces a relationship to be discussed in any other manner.

We kind of reduce our responsibility to not saying the N-word and to condemning the Klansmen, rather than saying many of our celebrated institutions are systemically racist. Many of our institutions that deal with law enforcement or controlling the bodies of Black people are systemically racist. Many of our educational institutions are systemically racist. Many of our corporate institutions are systemically racist. We don't have those conversations, so things don't change.

I need to take toward a lot of things that will refine me and make me better suited for leading anyone out of any place of injustice to a place of justice.