As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character.

I knew I had to write a good screenplay to be taken seriously, and I knew I needed to present Mississippi on visuals instead of just saying, 'Hey I wanted to film it in Mississippi.' It would seem like it was a hometown boy just wanting to be home.

It's easy to forget history or give it a cliff notes. The cliff notes of history. But mainly, so much of what happens in 'Eyes on the Prize' happened in Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi isn't really known for any other touchstone to the movement, other than Medgar Evers being killed. There were sit-ins and riots and atrocities.

I met this woman who was a hundred, this housekeeper, a hundred years old. I interviewed her. She just told me about her whole life. She's like, 'I can't read, I can't write; I can tell you who I was working for, and I can tell you the year, but who was president?'

Nanette' has been a journey. She went from being something of a personal little blast to the world from me, that I expected would seal me off into the margins as far as my career is concerned, and into an idiosyncratic sort of life beyond all of that.

I want the best and to get the most out of my short boxing career by fighting the best I can.

I did have pushback in the beginning of my career because my parents weren't really sure what I was going to do with my life going in the route of makeup. I was planning on medical school, so when I threw the makeup wrench at them, they were not expecting that.

Really, throughout my career, what I've done is taken teams with bad records and with every situation I've made them better.