I come from a very close class. I lucked out because drama schools are often very competitive... I have fourteen classmates.

There's always a sense of newness with acting, because every role, you come to every role fresh.

Slavery is something that is all too often swept under the carpet. The shame doesn't even belong to us, but we still experience it because we're a part of the African race. If it happened to one, it happened to all. We carry that burden.

One of the reasons why I went to the Yale School of Drama is because I felt that I was acting off of instinct, but sometimes that is not reliable. When you're not feeling it, what do you do? So, going to grad school was about getting the tools to just use my instrument to the best of my ability.

Whoopi Goldberg looked like me, she had hair like mine, she was dark like me. I'd been starved for images of myself. I'd grown up watching a lot of American TV. There was very little Kenyan material, because we had an autocratic ruler who stifled our creative expression.

I have a very ostrich mentality. I feel like I have my head in the sand so no one can see me.