My mom was my main influence growing up, and Phylicia Rashad reminded me a lot of my mother, just the way she handled certain things, she was... not soft-spoken but smooth-spoken. Just very calm, cool, collected about things.

My mother wouldn't allow me to speak slang when I was growing up. But when I got outside, around my friends, it was 'Yo' and 'That's the joint' and 'Yo, what's up?' So I had my game for my friends and my game for my mom.

Lets be clear, Dolly Parton is a rapper. Somewhere before all the country, I don't know what happens up there in the mountains when you're growing up, but she has been spitting rhymes for a very long time - 50 years I'd say.

When I was growing up, there were so many musicals you could watch. I like the fantasy of musicals and I love music.

I don’t live my life based on fear of failure. I live my life with an understanding of failure and I’m embracing it, because every time I fail, I learn something new."

In America it's good to show people you are fine, you're healthy, you're sporty, you're happy to do things, to live. And in France it's more like you don't have to show you have success.

Because I have success, it doesn't mean I'm part of the mainstream. I'm still an outsider.

I was in my 20s when I started writing my goals down, assigning each a date that I would achieve them by. I was amazed when I started reaching these goals by the date I had listed on them. It was a daily visualization exercise, and it almost always works.