Because I was aspirational, I did my work, I was respectful to my teachers, I experienced a lot of bullying from the black kids. My friends were largely white or Asian.

The fact that I was black and desirous to do my work, the other kids would call me a coconut, as if I were somehow attempting to be white. The bullying was real: I'd get punched, spat at, terrible things.

She could be white, black, Asian. It's very nondescript and that's the great thing about the show. It's about four women in a neighborhood. No matter what color, what race, what culture you are, you deal with the same problems in life.

I love that as a black person I've experienced not being a minority. I think that's helped me to combat the minority mentality people can have here, which can stop them scaling the heights.

I turn down a lot of movies because sometimes they glamorize violence or the darker side of sex or criminality.

In Harlem, I got all my black friends. But when I go downtown, I got black, white, Asian, Indian friends. There's no borders, no barriers.