I've just seen that there is a really amazing perspective that we're missing by not having more women directing.

The fact that I was black and desirous to do my work, the other kids would call me a coconut, as if I were somehow attempting to be white. The bullying was real: I'd get punched, spat at, terrible things.

People in the industry thought it was laughable that I should be going up for things that didn't clearly state what race the part was intended for.

You really want to keep ringing the changes - you hope that your work and your choices make people excited about where you're going next and that that might be somewhere unexpected.

I grew up watching period dramas, as we all did in the 1980s and '90s - endless adaptations of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens - and I loved them. But I never saw anyone like me in them, so I decided to find a story to erode the excuses for me not doing one.

I know that I am not owed the right to make movies. I know God has given me this privileged position, and I have to work dog-hard as an actor to make the films the best they can be.

I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality.

Hollywood has done some of these films, and some of them are ginormous biblical movies, but you can tell the people making these are not invested in the truth of what those stories are biblically. It shows in the work.

We've had so many faith-based movies that I think are sub-par; I almost want a new phrase for them.

As artists, our primary function is not to be educators - but we are at a time in history, where for us, our history needs to give context for stories that we hope to tell down the road.