When I was younger, my father was in the Foreign Service and we lived in Nigeria, Panama, and London, but for the most part I grew up in the South and D.C. I got the travel bug as a little person and I've bounced around a lot.

My mom has an English accent, so we always referred to the trunk as the 'boot.' And then, suddenly, we moved to Georgia and I would say things like 'open the boot' with a bit of an accent, and I quickly realized I had to adapt; that kind of thing will get you beat up!

Stone Mountain, Georgia, still had Ku Klux Klan marches, and I had a wild and courageous mother who'd put us in the car to watch them. She wanted us to know those things existed.

When I was younger, my father was in the Foreign Service and we lived in Nigeria, Panama, and London, but for the most part I grew up in the South and D.C. I got the travel bug as a little person and I've bounced around a lot.

I kind of feel like I have grown as just like a human being as a human being by being able to adapt and adjust and know that like you can't ever rest on your laurels, you have to sort of wake up; you actually have to be present.

I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a jazz musician and play at a restaurant for cash. And I've done some background vocals for recording artists.

I think it's a great time to be a person of color and with talent. And actually, to be a woman as well. Our show is one of the most diverse television shows on television right now.