[ This Is Us] is a character-driven dramedy, in which you will laugh. You may have to pull out your tissue box from time-to-time. But it will sort of reaffirm your desire to move forward in life. It's a very hopeful show.

We've seen many Black men lose their life over the past couple of years. Not only just heard about it.

I try not to get too high off the highs or too low off the lows.

People are starting to understand the other side's perspective and that's where empathy can sort of begin - once you quit judging other people but just understand where they're coming from.

Just as important I believe, is Black America can look back at the show and say, Wow, I think I now understand why a lot of white people were appalled at the acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

I have . . . a deep concern with the development of a literature worthy of our past, and of our destiny without which literature certainly, we can never come to much. I have a deep concern with the development of an audience worthy of such a literature.

Interestingly enough, I feel what the show [OJ Simpson] was able to accomplish in a really masterful way is that White America could look back on the show and the documentary and say, We understand why Black people were effusive at the acquittal of O.J. Simpson.

I'm pleased it turned out the way that it did, because I know lots of other people who did fantastic work and did not see this particular kind of recognition [like Emmy].

My character [in This Is Us], Randall, was adopted. He'd never met either of his biological parents so he seeks out and finds his biological father after 36 years. So that's where we find my character at the beginning of the show.

We've actually seen Black man murders [in] many a major city in the United States - New York City, St. Louis, Missouri, from Cleveland to Baltimore. It was those sorts of incidents that were very much prevalent in the forefront of that jury's conscience that allowed them to believe that this man [O.J. Simpson] could have been set up.