Race is a very sensitive subject.
I learned a lot from my Mom. My favorite lesson: remember there is no such thing as a certain way to parent and to remember that you are learning along with your child – it’s ok to make mistakes.
It’s an honest place to be if you don’t understand someone else’s experience, but there’s no way for the other to understand if a conversation or an explanation isn’t made.
A Modern Mom to me is not always someone that juggles a career and family. A Modern Mom is a woman who takes care of herself on the inside and the outside.
Children at certain ages have distinct actions, and boys at certain ages have a particular way of acting too.
And just because someone doesn’t understand doesn’t mean they don’t want to.
You don’t know what unconditional love is. You may say you do, but if you don’t have a child, you don’t know what that is. But when you experience it, it is the most fulfilling ever.
I stay in tune with my family and God.
And what happens a lot of times when – let’s just speak specifically white and black – when white or black people feel misunderstood when it comes to talking about race, they immediately get defensive.
I had been going on auditions and things like that since I was probably 10-11 years old.
The good news for me is that I have an amazing team behind me, and they’ve been with me for 20 years now – almost 20 years. And they have seen me as an actress, not necessarily just a black actress. So I have been lucky enough for them to see me that way.
When you look at “American Crime” and you have the character Terri LaCroix is a pharmaceutical executive – why does that character always have to be white?
And there’s also not enough films that are more of a imitation of what real life looks like.
I don’t think something is a failure if you put your all into it. I’m a big fan of the saying, “Nothing beats a failure but a try.”
I can work inside the boundaries of Erika Murphy, or whoever the character is. It’s fun to create somebody that’s not you, that doesn’t exist.
I’ve always been selective about materials I choose anyways. The incoming calls haven’t been projects that I necessarily want to do. Now I can always be called “Emmy winner Regina King.”
We play different people – our art form is performance art – so unless you’re playing the same type of person, I don’t know if you could improve or make it worse.
I would like to believe that most people don’t get married anticipating divorce.
I try to eat well, but I don’t deny myself the foods I love. I just eat them in moderation.
I create my own backstory regardless of if I’m told something about the background or not. There’s always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest.