I was the jokester, the one who made the family laugh.

I've been fortunate to work with Alfre Woodard and Jeffrey Wright people who are artists, have careers, longevity and full lives. That looks good to me.

There are expectations in how you play your character as a black woman, to be sassy and the same kind of feel, as if there are no quirky black women. I struggle with those things constantly, trying to add dimension to my work, and that's the goal, too.

I was kind of a bully, even though I'm tiny, 5' 2. As a child, I'd boss other kids around and dress my little brother up, just putting on shows, singing and dressing up.

My mom has an English accent, so we always referred to the trunk as the 'boot.' And then, suddenly, we moved to Georgia and I would say things like 'open the boot' with a bit of an accent, and I quickly realized I had to adapt that kind of thing will get you beat up!

Stone Mountain, Georgia, still had Ku Klux Klan marches, and I had a wild and courageous mother who'd put us in the car to watch them. She wanted us to know those things existed.