Producer

I feel like money is an interesting thing when you don't come from it.

Comedy used to be a vehicle for change. Now, comedy has gotten to this quirky, nonsensical place, which I enjoy. But I do think there is room for discussion-based humor. We can tell those stories in a way that feels edifying.

We should be aware and constantly having conversations about the world because that's how you change it from the bigger standpoint rather than acutely trying to change things.

For me, it was important to keep my name in 'mainstream Hollywood.'

I believe comedy is a really good lens to filter serious issues through. If people are laughing, they don't necessarily realize until they stop laughing that they just took something in that's going to start a conversation.

I consider myself a disciple of Norman Lear. And one of the things he did was topic-driven humor.

Everybody - every single person - has a story. Find yours and tell it in your voice.

Most importantly, I want my kids to be happy. You're only as happy as your saddest kid.

As a creative, you have to be your truest form. You can't worry about fitting into whatever boxes people want to put you in.

Honestly, I regret not having spanked my kids.

No civil rights movement has gotten anywhere without the help of white liberals.

I've found that the more honest and true you are and can talk about a character and people's experiences, it's less ostracizing. It actually has the opposite effect than one would think. It makes the characters and the story more inclusive.

I really want to do what 'Veep' did. 'Veep,' in a very comical way, gave us a look inside the political machine, but I want to do it for the average American family.

There has never been a prosecuted case of slavery. There's no criminality to it. So, it was just like, 'It's over,' and thus, because it was over, and it was never considered 'wrong' in the prosecutable, criminal sense of the word, the country doesn't take it as wrong.

When you're in the middle of it, when you're a kid growing up, you don't think, 'This is my first heartbreak.' You just think, 'My heart is broken.' But then as a parent, you look back, and you see your child go through his or her first heartbreak, and you're realizing, 'Oh my God, this is her first heartbreak.'

I think that, for so much of our matriculation through American society, black people sort of feel like outsiders.

I'm not for having to support everything that's black, because I definitely don't. But I do feel like it is imperative for us to see that we are not a monolithic people.

I hear a creak in my house, and I'm calling the police immediately, but at the same time, I do know that when I call them, I'm going to make sure to say, 'I'm a black guy, and this is my house.'

'A Different World,' for me, was in a lot of ways responsible for me going to college. I wanted to go to a black college, and I wanted to get out of Los Angeles. It's just a natural part of all of our journeys, that idea of leaving home.

You get a little older, and you start understanding the world in a different way and what you don't have control over and what you do have control over.