It's no mistake that Harriet Tubman is revisiting us, in different forms, right now, as we travel through a very contentious time in the world. Her spirit is one that we absolutely need today, as we face odds that are akin to the divisive and systemic oppression that we read about in our history books, but it's taken on a modern-day articulation of itself. I almost believe that Harriet Tubman asked God for a leave like, "I'm gonna need to go back down there and take care of some things. They're in trouble."

The real truth is that [Harriet Tubman ] spirit is so powerful that it consumes you. I was literally reduced to basic breath and blinks while she inhabited my vessel and told her story through me.

I did my homework, of course, by inhaling as much literature as was available to find, so that when it was time to shoot I could hopefully exhale [ Harriet Tubman ].

[Harriet Tubman] lived such a full, complex, and irrefutably-dynamic life that all the craft in the world would be insufficient in honoring her legacy.

[Harriet Tubman] is a legend, an icon, a soldier on the side of justice, a spiritual warrior, and a servant of God, as well as the one of the baddest women to literally ever walk the land. I surrendered to her spirit.

Harriet Tubman didn't have strategy meetings or a movement behind her, she was the movement, she was inspired by being sick and tired of the injustice she was experiencing and she knew she had a right to liberty or death, one or the other she was going to have by any means necessary.

Rosa Parks was primed, she had the Civil Rights Movement behind her, she didn't just decide to sit on the bus, it was strategic.

Thank God for Canada! In the context of this narrative [in Underground] and beyond, Canada was certainly an additional option for the many traveling the treacherous terrain of the Underground Railroad in pursuit of what was perceived as "freedom."

There will be a wealth of facts revealed and revisited in [Underground] pertaining to Harriet Tubman. That is a huge part of my excitement, the fact that this generation will get such a beautifully-detailed introduction to a hero and icon that has largely lived in a few pages of our history books and in one-dimensional photographs.

I think we're in a time that calls for that level of courage, that level of resolve - you know, to be completely disgusted with injustice to the point that you will have to take some huge leaps of faith. And it may take one person leading many.