I'm looking through old things of mine, and there was this binder from when I was 14 years old. It is essentially a dream board. It is a school binder that I had put magazine clippings on. It said, 'TV actress, fame, a picture of Halle Berry, a picture of Christina Aguilera.' I was obsessed with both of them.
Working with Spike Lee was a dream of mine. It was amazing to be able to collaborate with such a visionary.
You have to be resilient to be a black person in America. The thing about being resilient is being able to fall apart and pick yourself up again. And putting yourself back together, that improves on what you were before.
An actor hears 'no' more often than the average person. A black human and a black woman on top of that? That's a lot of no's.
You look at 'Survivor's Remorse.' Or 'Blackish.' Or Issa Rae's brilliant, funny 'Insecure,' which started out on YouTube but is now on HBO. And you see multifaceted representations of the African-American experience. It's insanely exciting.
I really feel like the stars have aligned many ways, many times for me. I have been blessed to play some awesome roles and nuanced and meaningful characters.
When I choose a role, what I'm looking for is the ability is to tell our stories. Me being a black woman, that's just a given. It's going to be a part of any role I do, making sure I tell it truthfully and nuanced and in a way that many people can relate to.
I'm like any other girl: I see the Instagram posts and the Tumblr stuff. I'm inspired by what my fellow girls are doing.
It was not hard for me to find guidance and motivation. I'm very blessed, and my parents were always so supportive of myself and my brother. Whatever you wanted to do, you just had to give 110 percent. So whatever that was, they supported it.
I'm influenced by many things. Simply turning on the television, I feel inundated with images and messages to be a certain way. So I try to limit my influences by being aware of what I allow into my environment. I'm always conscious of what's trying to creep into my subconscious.
In my junior year of high school, I went to a boarding school for the arts: a school called the Governor's School for The Arts and Humanities. It was basically a mini-Juilliard - an intense training conservatory for the arts.
Every time I see my friends on a billboard, I'm so excited. If God can do it for me or them, he can do it for everybody.
It's so important... to have a variety of representation on television.
I love period dramas.
I've had the struggling actor experience. At one point in New York, I was holding four jobs, including bottle service girl, while I was trying to break into acting.
A show like 'Orange Is the New Black' has every race and ethnicity - and you don't even have to depend on four networks any more. You can go to Amazon or Netflix and be in an award-winning show.
