Womanhood is you. Womanhood is everything that's inside of you.

On stage you never watch yourself. You just experience it, and then you go home, and you feel pretty good if you gave a pretty good performance or crappy if you didn't. But in TV and film, you actually have to experience it while you're doing it, and then you have to watch it. And then when you're watching it, you watch it with a different sensibility than how you experienced it.

You can't be hesitant about who you are.

I really wanted to show [in "fences"] a marriage that is working. Not perfect, but working.

I do believe that there are African Americans who have thick accents. My mom has a thick accent; my relatives have thick accents. But sometimes you have to adjust when you go into the world of film, TV, theatre, in order to make it accessible to people.

I sort of feel like that's the most revolutionary thing we can do with our narrative for me as Black people is to show that we are just like you.

I don't think most people understand acting, even the people who call themselves savvy, even actors.