Director

You don't have to make yourself look like people expect you to look.

If I can go three grandmothers back and find a slave, that means someone else can go three grandmothers back and find a slave owner. When you interrogate your histories, it forces you to rethink who you are and where you are.

I wrote poetry and short stories. I would send them to magazines; they wouldn't get in. But short stories are how I found philosophy and how I'd understand the world.

I still want to do features, but on my own terms.

Coming-of-age stories, people roll their eyes.

I think 'Mudbound' reveals the interconnectiveness of our stories. You can't separate out threads of history and race as economic construct. 'Mudbound' makes it very plain. Race is about commerce; it's not an actual thing. It's a fiction that was created to basically divide resources unequally.

I definitely felt the desire to, like - I definitely knew there was an elsewhere. I definitely knew that, like, if I were going to be free, I needed to be away from, kind of, like, Nashville and kind of get out of the South and get out of the country.

I thought that marketing was a way to be creative in business but quickly learned all creative stuff happens at the ad agency.

To me, if you can do the Wicked Witch live, you can play anybody.

I started out at Procter & Gamble marketing panty liners, so basically selling women insecurity. I thought there must be more to life than this. Then I was on set for a Dr. Scholl's commercial, and I asked one of the execs, 'How do you get a job behind the camera?' and he said, 'Film school.' So I quit and applied to NYU.

I had this thing where I only wanted to work on original material, no adaptations, and obviously, that changed. I really wanted to have the resources and have the space and the time to tell stories that I've really cared about. I've kind of changed my approach, but I've gotten to do that, to tell stories that I really care about.

There's a dearth of media around young black women and certainly a dearth of LGBT media for people of color.

Having to stake out your identity and have people question whether or not you're being yourself was a tension that I could relate to.

I thought I'd get an MBA, and then I could be anything. And I'd write on the side. That was the idea.

Before Charlottesville, it might have been easy to dismiss the plot of 'Mudbound' as no longer relevant. Now, I feel like audiences will be more receptive to the material - and to interrogating their personal histories after watching it.

I grew up in Nashville in a white suburb. We lived next to a Klan member. We didn't see hoods, but my dad knew that guy was a Grand Dragon.

I kept getting offered all this young adult stuff. I don't want to keep telling teen coming-of-age stories!

I can't put anything out that's not me.