The good news for me is that I have an amazing team behind me, and they've been with me for 20 years now - almost 20 years. And they have seen me as an actress, not necessarily just a black actress. So I have been lucky enough for them to see me that way.

It's an honest place to be if you don't understand someone else's experience, but there's no way for the other to understand if a conversation or an explanation isn't made.

When you look at "American Crime" and you have the character Terri LaCroix is a pharmaceutical executive - why does that character always have to be white?

"Southland" was not written for a black woman.

My husband didn't want the divorce, but I did. So there was a lot of bitterness initially. Once we got to the space where we understood that we have the most important thing in the world in common; no one else shared that commonality. Our son is priceless, and in order to give him the best, we have to be better to each other. Although we are still divorced, we still call each other "family." It was a journey to get there, but it's a beautiful place to be.

I never really loved school through junior high, but then I started running track my freshman year, and I was just like, 'Wow, this is cool!

I know in my own marriage I stayed in it to provide my son with what I thought was a stable background and to give him what I thought was the family life a child should have with two parents. But that isnt always the best way, and it took me taking my son to therapy after the divorce to really see it.