To relax, I love sitting back and turning my brain off and watching TV.
By high school, I was telling everyone, 'Oh, I'm going to be a doctor when I grow up,' because my dad was always saying to me, 'Pick a career path where you're always going to be necessary.' But by junior year, I was president of choir, I was the lead in the school play, and I just loved being onstage performing.
Words can't describe how one would feel in that moment after doing a test for something you really want but in your heart you don't think you have a chance of getting.
If I had a free afternoon, I would play music, sit in my backyard, and drink coffee.
Strength doesn't mean an absence of pain.
I come from a family of storytellers. Growing up, my father would make up these stories about how he and my mother met and fell in love, and my mother would tell me these elaborately visual stories of growing up as a kid in New York, and I was always so enrapt.
We all have our family issues from time to time.
Not to say there's not good TV out there, but I think TV is better when it accurately reflects the world as it is.
I really care about people, and I would need someone to also genuinely value other human beings and want to be connected with people in the world and to know about other cultures. That might not be a high standard for someone else, but for me, it's really important to try and stick to that.
When I was younger, my mother tried to get me an agent because I was always singing and dancing, but whenever she took me to an audition, I would just shut down.
I think it's well-known that I love all things ABC and Shonda Rhimes - I'm a huge 'Scandal' and 'Grey's Anatomy' fan.
TV is such a great medium in what it can do in terms of enlightening an audience. We can really inspire and teach people about other people. That's a powerful tool, and that's something that the arts has always been capable of doing.
Back when people couldn't read, other people would take newspapers and turn them into theater so that people would know what was going on in the world. That is a powerful thing.
Not everyone's high standards have to be the same thing.
I can be just a touch controlling!
I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.
I've been performing since I was a child; my mother would have to pull me aside and tell me that I wasn't onstage. I was a cheerleader, president of choir, and in the school play.
Diversity is such an interesting word. I feel like when people hear the word 'diversity,' they think that it means only people of color, when in reality, diversity is all-inclusive; it means everyone.
A man can get my attention by smiling at me and then coming over and talking to me. The best way to get a girl's attention is to start a conversation.
I have a girl crush on Olivia Munn so much, especially on 'Newsroom.' And Cara Delevingne, but who doesn't love her face? Viola Davis is my acting crush.
