With theater, depending on the audience, the show is different every night and really requires your constant concentration. With film, it's more possible to focus for shorter, more intense bits of time.
When you live in an environment where you aren't allowed to be fully who you are, you aren't taken seriously, and you aren't respected. What that actually does to a person's confidence and psyche is really fascinating to me.
'The Knick' is set in New York during the 1990s, and it takes place around a hospital called The Knickerbocker. It's about a team of surgeons and nurses who are on the cutting edge of medicine.
My goal has always been to try to live up to every ounce of my potential. For me, that means working with the best people and working with the best material.
I think that's what makes characters interesting - when you paint a person into a corner, and you see what they do to get out of that corner. It's what makes drama drama.
I grew up in Alabama in a very small town and didn't have access to the finest of anything, really. But my mother was the kind of woman who just wanted us, me and my sisters, to be exposed to any and anything she could find.
Frankly, I think that's something that black people in America have often done - finding ways under very, very difficult circumstances to be subversive, but also to push things forward. And I think that applies to music. I think it applies to dance. I think it applies to a number of things.
Everybody gathered at my Aunt Hannah's house, and we sat around and talked, ate, drank and told lies. That's what people do, and I just sat there and listened.
