I constantly think as an artist, as a rapper of what are the stories you want to tell? They can't all be, "I'm ill, I'm fresh, look at me, I have money." At some point, when you have an audience for it, there are stories that need to be told.
I look for a great story. One that I would like to watch, or tell, or that I think needs to be told, because I know that, as an actress, I have a responsibility to tell certain stories and to tell them properly.
I think actors, at a certain point in their careers, decide they're either going to keep taking risks or take the exact same risk over and over again so that it's not a risk anymore. That's when I don't want to work with them. I think there are some actors who are just doing the exact same thing, and they will never shift from it.
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.
You can be imaginative, you have the technology to convert your vision, you have the freedom to write the kind of stories you want to tell beyond the set formulas. Also, you have varied platforms to tell different kinds of stories.
Too many young actors are strutting about and doing films without having developed some of the depth you need to bring off certain kinds of roles. I think that's the problem with the system, where a lot of younger actors who haven't had a chance to develop suddenly become stars.
We need to be I think equally sensitive to the injurious power of certain kinds of speech acts but also to the subversive and possibly liberatory effects of certain kinds of play.
We need to have more women founders stepping up to kind of own their own story and ask for what they want and tell success stories and start really building confidence that these stories are out there.
I just love storytelling. I write music to tell stories. So when I'm done writing a song, I take it and go, 'Okay. How can I interpret these lyrics differently?' I love taking lyrics that were so close to me at a certain point in my life and then revamping them. I always want to take things to the next level.
I think that 'Room 104' offered us an organic opportunity to tell all kinds of stories with all kinds of protagonists.
You hear stories about directors using manipulation to get actors to do certain things, but I think when you're working with professional actors, it's all about trust. They can do anything you want, it's just a matter of them understanding what you're looking for, and the reason why.
I think actors have a huge responsibility because of the vastness of their outreach. I am a big believer of the good that film, television, and theater can do, and I want to be a part of that. Throughout my career, I want to keep telling amazing stories and inspiring people.
The chance to tell personal, language-specific, culturally specific stories is really flourishing on TV and I think it's just the nature of movies and international demands that you need to get a much bigger audience. TV is more like independent film was. The forms of adult drama and certain kinds of sophisticated comedy, there's no room for them in the tentpole movie universe.
I'm someone who has a singular goal in making films: I want to tell a story. There are certain stories that I want to tell.
As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of poets: those who want to tell stories and sing songs, and those who want to work out the chemical equation for language and pass on their experiments as poetry.
Over the years, we have been conditioned that certain communities need to be looked upon in a certain typical way. So I think we need to question the logic behind it. 'Mulk' is going to question that logic - and where did it start and why did it start and the need to change it immediately.