on diversity:“If you turn on the television and you are not represented on that television, you become invisible to yourself. And there was very little of myself that I saw on TV, or in the movies that I was watching, or in magazines that were lying around the salons or around the house. And so these are subconscious things. Yes, Western beauty standards are things that affect the entire world. And then what happens? You’re a society that doesn’t value darker skin.”
on starring in Broadway show Eclipsed (a Danai Gurira drama set during the Liberian Civil War): "I didn't grow up seeing African women onstage very often, much less African women in African stories. I was in love with the world Danai [Gurira] created."
on fame: After '12 Years a Slave' and the quote-unquote meteoric rise, I felt like there was a moment where I was suffering from whiplash. I had talked so much about who I was that I'd forgotten who I was."
source: 1, 2 - took out the tumblr source