A Quote by Jurnee Smollett-Bell

There's a lot of progress happening in TV. You have amazing shows like 'How to Get Away With Murder.' You have people like Shonda Rhimes, Lee Daniels with 'Empire,' and Jason Katims with 'Friday Night Lights' and 'Parenthood.' You have people behind the scenes writing complex women.
'Girls' is one of my favorite shows of all time. One of the things I love about Lena Dunham and Jenji Kohan and Shonda Rhimes is that they're all willing to show complex, amazing women.
There's something about Jason Katims' writing that just feels like home to me. He gives you so much liberty to play, which you don't find on most TV shows. You just don't.
With film, there's a consistency to it, but what I like about the TV shows that I've been fortunate to do, like 'Friday Night Lights' and 'True Blood,' is that it feels like you're doing a film.
A lot of amazing films are happening, a lot amazing TV shows are happening, and people are not afraid to pick actors instead of stars.
Shows like 'Empire,' 'Black-ish,' 'Scandal,' and 'How to Get Away With Murder' are expanding viewers' perspectives on what people of color can be like. They're showing more range. They're showing more diversity within diversity.
When you're talking about people like Shonda Rhimes, Vince Gilligan or Beau Willimon, you're talking to people who are notable and celebrities in their own right. People want to know how their brains work.
Jason Katims creates truly relatable three-dimensional people you fall in love with right away. Jason always puts a lot of heart into what he does. He has a way of touching your emotional core in a life-affirming way. And he's a great show runner.
For myself, anyway, I think that recurring has been such a gift, because I've been able to work on a lot of shows that I've really had a lot of respect for before I went in, shows like 'Friday Night Lights' and 'Nip/Tuck,' for example.
When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.
When you use force, people get hurt, and when you kill people, their relatives don't like it. And usually war has some unanticipated consequences so it's something you shouldn't launch into, on the expectation that this is going to rally the nation. This is not like 'Friday Night Lights'.
I traveled and worked with amazing actors, like Andy Garcia, Alec Baldwin, Brendan Fraser, Forest Whitaker, Lee Pace. It was this great learning experience. And then, I started watching a lot of television. I was always in these foreign countries and I would get TV shows on DVD, and I started to realize that all of the amazing roles for women were on television. I was spoiled by Buffy because I thought that was the way it was everywhere, and it's not.
To work for Shonda Rhimes is heaven. It's been amazing.
The shows I've been working on, especially 'Parenthood' and 'Friday Night Lights,' I think are completely character-driven stories. I think, for most writers, that's a privilege to be telling those kinds of stories. It's erroneous to me.
People only see you on TV and riding around like stars, but they don't see behind the scenes how much time you have to put in working out. The lifting, the eating habits, trying to change all that so you can be that guy on TV, to be a baller, that's what people don't understand.
When people first started watching UFC, it seemed like a no-holds barred event... early on it looked like all the fighters were crazy. Actually, there are a lot of techniques, and the reality shows have let people see the fighters behind the scenes.
True Blood' is amazing. I have to give a shout out to 'Melrose Place' because I do watch. I love 'Entourage.' One of my favorite shows back in the day was 'Friday Night Lights.
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