Kai was always dead and gone. That was always the plan. That was the plan when I signed on for the role. That was the plan once I was talking to Julie when the role was coming to a close. It was always, 'He dies and is actually gone.'

I did a lot of musicals growing up.

Any other illness, any other disease that we're faced with, there's sympathy and understanding. We get help for those. With mental illness, our go-to is to categorize them as, 'Oh, they're crazy,' to belittle the problem.

If I wasn't making a movie, I was trying to master a new musical instrument or trying to teach myself how to shave with a straight razor. I had to find the weirdest things just to increase my understanding of other cultures or other arts or intellectual pursuits.

When we look at each other, we're the same family. You don't have to see black or Latino - we're one family. That's America.

I come from a home where my mother was the only emotional umbrella under which we found all the warmth and comforts and sustenance. My father would come and go, and not as often as we'd want him to.

My father did not live with us. When he came home, he never took off his shoes - he wouldn't be staying. My father had another family: Although my father had two homes, he paid for our education and household expenses.

The virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one's own family.