Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I think that there's room to grow, as far as being a person of color in film. I went to the theater the other day, and there's a whole bunch of Valentine's Day movies coming out. And the only ones that you see a lot of us in are us goofing off and clowning around; it's this kind of pseudo-romantic comedy kind of thing.
Working with great actors - being part of something of that magnitude and not knowing the business and what the business entailed or any of that. I was so wet behind the ears, I didn't know anything. It's, like, you're watching movies, and then here you are in front of those people and working with them. It was pretty interesting.
Actors look at life in a different way. When I meet people, I know that one day I may portray that person or someone like them. It may be a cop or a homeless guy. It helps you to pay more attention to people. Everyone I meet, I retain something from them, something from their personality. It helps me to portray realism in my work.
The networks are different so they have a different approach. Obviously, with The Shield - that was on FX so they had a little bit more leeway as far as the dialogue was concerned and even the content and what they showed the viewers, which is a great thing. But we will push it to the limit as far as FOX will let us go; that's for damn sure.
Even when I was on Curb Your Enthusiasm I wasn't this "over-the-top" crazy character. It was still kind of play it straight but it was funny because the situation was funny. That's kind of how I portrayed things and I like dramas; I like to be able to - because in dramas you can laugh and joke and still be serious, be real. I like the realism of them.
I'm very comfortable with what I do, but it just seems like yesterday that I just started, at 19, and it's been like a whirlwind ever since. I've gotten to travel all over the world and meet all kinds of people and do all kinds of great things, so it's, like, surreal. It just lets you know how time flies, especially when you're having fun. It seems like time keeps going by faster as I get older.
Being producer you're still going to have to sell somebody who's going to give you the money on the idea and everything like that. But it does give you a little bit more control if you're thinking in that creative process; it gives you more control to tell the story you want to tell rather than sort of just reading a script that somebody else wrote and says, "Yes, please, you can hire me for this job." So it's a little bit more hands-on, a little bit more closer to the heart.
The beauty of when you watch good television or films is that, yes, you may have a multi-cultural cast but those roles could be anybody - they could be white, they could be black. To show the world that we have more in common than we have different with each other is to me the ultimate goal of all of that. It does help unite in people's mind the thought that people are the same. Yes, there's going to be cultural differences, but for the most part, we are all in the same gang as human beings.