I was a good bartender. I wouldn't say I was the best bartender in New York, but I could hold my own.
I remember when I got into Juilliard - which was just crazy to me, that I would be studying at a school like that - the choice to cut all my hair off was really symbolic for me.
Before Juilliard, I was a schoolteacher for a little bit. I taught in a charter school. I was a substitute teacher for kids ages 3 to 6.
Like any actor, I want to be able to have a long career and show different characters and a range.
I really want to play a superhero. I want to take the role-model thing up a notch. I've always been a fan of movies and TV, and to be able to play the ultimate TV superhero would be awesome.
I eat a lot. I probably eat more than anybody that I know. I'll go on set and get a plate of bacon, a bagel, an omelet, boiled eggs, fresh fruit, oatmeal, fresh juice, potatoes, basically anything that's there. I don't mean that I alternate between these things. I'll eat all of this for breakfast.
I never want to pigeonhole myself or get typecast. I'm looking forward to my career and showing all of my range as an actress, and I'm looking at other mediums, too. I'm a theater actress first. And I cannot wait to return to the stage.
I'm not a writer; I'm an actor. My job is to take whatever character I'm given and - especially because I have the responsibility of being a black actress, and I know young black girls are looking up, and everyone's looking to what's on television - to just try to give whatever character I'm playing as three-dimensional a portrayal as I can.
There was this girl who went to my school, and she did a Nikki Giovanni poem, 'Ego Tripping,' and it was just different from everyone else's. It wasn't flat recitation. It had an energy and a life to it. And it made me sit up in my seat, and my eyes got wide, and I really felt inside myself, 'She's making me feel things. I want to do that.'
It is television; we're making television at the end of the day. It's all smoke and mirrors, and it's all fake, but it's not, because it makes people really feel things that are real.
