As soon as I was obedient to just taking a chance on God, all of these things that you're seeing - 'Black Panther' or 'Humans' or 'The Commuter' or Steven Spielberg - it came right after I took that break.
My brothers and I came to L.A. as break-dancers when I was about 10, and by the time I was 15, I was working on this really big movie, with Steven Spielberg and Dustin Hoffman and Robin Williams.
I had written the script for Juno and apparently Steven Spielberg had read it. I can't just call him Steven, that's weird... Mr. Spielberg had read it and he liked it. He asked me if I would write this television show for him and I said, 'Yeah!'
My 'Black Panther' run really wasn't about Black Panther. It was about Ross. It was about exploding myths about black superheroes, black characters, and black people, targeted specifically at a white, male-dominated retailer base.
My big break down here was working with Steven Spielberg in '1941.' It was a very small role, as Corporal Foley, who was part of the tank crew with Dan Aykroyd.
God helps me for sure every day and at every contest. I broke my hand and had to get surgery on it. The recovery was really frustrating because I had to skip three weeks at the beginning of the season. But I flipped it around and took it as a blessing. I said a lot of prayers and just asked God to do His thing. I did other things to compliment the recovery like getting the right sleep and taking care of my body. But I went back to the doctor after four weeks and he was ecstatic about the recovery of my hand. I take that as a tribute to my faith and my belief in doing the right things.
In 'Black Panther,' I tried to preserve virtually all versions and interpretations of 'Black Panther' - including the Jack Kirby one, which was really tough to do - and make it work within current continuity.
These are the two sides of Steven Spielberg: the reverent grown-up who knows when to say the right thing and the exuberant kid who loves a good laugh. Both sides are sincere, and both are necessary, for Spielberg knows he can't feel good about himself unless everyone else feels the same way.
Steven Spielberg's 'The Color Purple' might as well have been about a bunch of dancing eggplants for all it has to say about black history.
Latter-day Saints are not obedient because they are compelled to be obedient. They are obedient because they know certain spiritual truths and have decided, as an expression of their own individual agency, to obey the commandments of God. . . . We are not obedient because we are blind, we are obedient because we can see
I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad... he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.
The cool thing is, I was a little nervous about how they were going to handle Black Panther in his own movie, but then when I saw 'Civil War' and just the perfect way they handled him in that movie, it made me even more excited about a Black Panther film.
By the time May rolls around, I'm probably going to want to spend a month on an island. But if Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh or any number of directors were to say 'Hey, there's this role, are you interested?' I'd be there in a flash
By the time May rolls around, I'm probably going to want to spend a month on an island. But if Steven Spielberg or Steven Soderbergh or any number of directors were to say 'Hey, there's this role, are you interested?' I'd be there in a flash.
When they call you and say, 'So you want to play 'Black Panther?'' if you know what 'Black Panther' is, there's no way in the world you're going to say no because there's a lot of opportunity for magic to happen.
I'm crazy about Steven Spielberg. Another inspiration for me, and I don't know where it came from, is children. If I'm down, I'll take a book with children's pictures and look at it and it will just lift me up. Being around children is magic.
Taking care of my parents is one of the things that I want to do, just give them some of the things that we never had a chance to have. It's all about remembering where I came fromt.