On being bored by film and TV
“Cookie scared the hell out of me. Just before I got the role, I’d said, ‘F— it all, I’m going back to theater.’ I felt lazy and like I needed to sharpen the tools. So I did theater at The Pasadena Playhouse. Then my manager said, ‘You have to read this script.’ I’m like, ‘Hip-hop? Oh my God, what are they trying to do? Fox is going to pick this up? This isn’t HBO?’ And then I got nervous and started pacing the floor. ‘Oh my God, Cookie is bigger than life. You will love her or hate her.’”
On why she joined Empire
“I was petrified but for me that fear means it’s a challenge that I had to take on. If it doesn’t shake me up, then why am I doing it? I’m not servicing the character or the fans if I just walk through it and that’s not what I got in this industry to do. Art is so powerful and I felt like the subject matter this project dealt with was something we haven’t seen on primetime television. Empire has forced people to have conversations that they were afraid to have. And that is what art is supposed to do. I was like finally we get a chance to shake it up a bit. I just didn’t know it was going to shake things up this much!”
