There's a lot of great writing, and characters, and stories being told in television nowadays. And much more than there used to be. The opportunities to tell stories, because of the opportunities to show content. And so it's drawing actors from cinema, movie actors, actors to where there's a lot of opportunities to where you can tell stories.
In L.A., I was a talent manager for many years. I represented many African-American actors. After a while, I became disheartened over the shortage of roles for African Americans.
Usually, I'll be auditioning for the third lead, and there will be Latina actresses, Indian actresses, African American actresses because it will be like, 'Let's check off this box. We have our lead white girl, and we need an ethnic slot.'
I haven't had a lot of experience with glamour. I've never had to mask myself, as many now not-so-young actresses have had to do. Female actors in that regard have a different lot in life than male actors.
I love a certain kind of acting style that I would call non-American, which tends to be more detail-oriented and less externalized. There's a kind of naturalism that I often find in non-American actors. I also find that quality in the American actors I work with, but I like to bring in those influences creatively.
I've made it my mission to make movies starring African American actors and about the African American experience and put them in the mainstream. They're very universal stories I've told - every movie I've done.
They think America is like a major league in entertainment. For me personally being here for the past year-and-a-half, I know some of the arguments and discrepancies African American actors have with the opportunities here.
As a Japanese actor, I really want to work with a lot of actors and actresses in the world and many directors who have many different kinds of talents. I feel like nationally doesn't matter at all.
I have a lot of friends in Kollywood. I enjoy a very warm relationship with many actors, actresses, directors, and producers here.
I think there's a lot of things that occur within the African-American community, that we would prefer to stay within the African-American community - that we get a little nervous when you start having scenes or dialogue that we know is going to be viewed and heard on a national or global scale.
From my experience, I would say no: actors of East Asian descent don't get the opportunities white actors do. I know that's inherently a problem in a country that produces a lot of period drama, but I have to fight so hard to get parts that don't have something to do with China.
There are so many families who do not come up in a traditional household. African Americans, Latins, and, I'm sure, whites as well, but there are a lot of men missing in African American communities and in Latin communities.
I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American President of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals.
It's exciting to me that Ride Along is a movie that has two African American leads, but it's even more exciting to me that it's not a movie about two African American leads. They just happen to be African American. It's a universal story. It's a story about a guy in love with a girl, and he's gotta get the approval of the overbearing, mean brother. That's a universal theme.
In a moment when young black voters were key to the election and the reelection of a black president, when the Department of Justice has been led these years by the first two African-American attorneys general, when many big cities boast African-American league prosecutors and police chiefs and mayors, even in this moment, why is it that it still feels to so many young people that there is more power for change on the court than in the courts?
One of the reasons that the African American actors wanted to be a part of the show was because these people are talking to each other the way that African American people talk to each other, and they said that they didn't see that on TV.