It made me realize again how complicated being a mother is. You have 50 million heartbreaking moments, and 100 million beautiful, joyous ones.

I worked in television; I'm the Failed Pilot Queen, I've done so many television shows, pilots, theater ... when you do it for so long, I'm telling you, you get to the point where it becomes varied because you take what's available for a number of reasons. It's just an occupational hazard.

That's why there's so much bad acting out there, because you could see actors watching themselves.

I think that what happens so often on screen is high-stake moments tends to look too pretty. And I just don't think it's honest.

We know the road of lack of recognition, of people telling us that we can't headline a movie because black women don't translate overseas, that every time we try to break the glass ceiling, people say no, people push back. And it's everything that people don't see out there.

All you really need to do is shift people just a tiny bit for change to happen. It doesn't have to be huge and humongous.

Sometimes you take a job for the money, sometimes you take it for the location, sometimes you take it for the script; there are just a number of reasons, and ultimately what you see is the whole landscape of it. But I can tell you from behind the scenes - that's what it is, as an actor.