Growing up, I never imagined I would be an actor.

It's funny, because in drama school, my greatest strength was my range. So my early career was like that: I played all kinds of different characters.

As I got further into my career, as a character of color, if I was going to have the types of opportunities I felt I deserved, and continue to have them, I was going to have to start creating those opportunities for myself.

I started acting almost on a whim to help my music career.

I wanted to write a book about two women falling in love that wasn't hinged on tragedy or that involved some horrible identity-based misfortune. I wanted to write a pretty standard romantic comedy where nobody dies, nobody gets hurt, nobody gets sick.

Insult is powerful. Insult begets both rage and humor and often at the same time.

Acting by yourself is pretty darn hard, especially having to do physical comedy.

Because comedy is cheap to put on: if you've got a play or an opera, there's a whole load of people and a set, but comedy is just one man or woman. And because TV has learned to love comics - there's so many more around now than when I started out.