I know someone from growing up who is in jail right now for the rest of his life, but he was one of the sweetest people I ever knew.

Kids feel like they have to puff up or shrink. These reclusive qualities begin to develop because you feel that who you are is going to either be accepted or rejected by your family and friends.

When I was growing up, I was told you could be anything you want to be, but I didn't really believe that because you couldn't be president. Like, I knew that; we never had a black president.

Now, being one who lived in the era of Obama, there are so many markers of improvement made. It's hard to be mindful of that, in the same way you're going, 'Oh everything's cool now!' and it isn't. But I try to be mindful of how much of an improvement there has been because that gives hope. You need hope. I need hope!

'Free State of Jones' went beyond that. It got into how the South wasn't as homogenous as we thought it was - or even the North for that matter, where we like to assume everyone wanted to free the slaves and they were all abolitionists. It actually shows how complex these ideologies were on both sides.

I'd never been around or seen a black showrunner, and in some ways you wish that it wasn't a big deal.

I've been working almost 20 years, and I think I've worked with maybe one black director of photography in that time. Maybe two women directors or DPs. Maybe. And I've done a lot of TV. That's a lot of people I've worked with.

There's nothing fun about 30 people standing around watching you, like, pretend to pleasure someone. Nothing enjoyable about it, believe me.

The people that I admire have a wonderful balance of self-belief and humility.

I don't have a wallet. I carry my driver's license and a couple of credit cards in my phone. That, and a money clip.

If you're throwing someone off a roof, you're throwing them off the roof. It's there. You don't have to do anything extra with that. The audience is obviously going to react to that because it's such a heightened thing to do. But in the other moments, you really look for ways to craft those, because they're more important, honestly.

In thinking about it, the villains often have a little bit more range because their morality is different. You can have just a really good time as an actor, and there is just more there that you can explore on that side of the story.

'Luke Cage' is about a reluctant superhero who lives in the shadows in Harlem. He has to decide if he's going to step up and fight for the heart of the city and defend the people against Cornell 'Cottonmouth' Stokes, my character, who kinda wants to keep everything in order and intact. I'm the criminal element in the story.

Come on, we would be foolish to say that there's never been African-American leads in some capacity, people of color in some capacity, leading shows or what have you. But it hasn't happened enough and in a manner that is an accurate reflection of the world that we live in.

Hollywood has to be a better reflection of the world we live in.

I think #OscarsSoWhite is about there not truly being enough people of color represented.

When you have these surprise breakout films that do well, that have good performances in them, it puts a lot of pressure on the Academy to recognize those projects, so it's more of a conversation about what is greenlit.

The call for diversity is about recognizing that in order to be in the conversation come awards season, it goes back to the content that is being produced.

At a certain point in my career, I was probably having a difficult time 'holding space.' So you get a character that has to be commanding in order for him to resonate and make sense.

Marvel has such a huge slice of the pie.

I think if you have any desire to be a leading man or to really carry some of these stories, there's this relationship that has to be cultivated with an audience. People have to be able to say your name.

I wanted to take on my full name, which was sort of a crazy thing to do considering that we're in Hollywood.

Cultures and races are mixing in a very organic way in the world, and that should be reflected in film and television.

You want entertainment in general, every aspect of it, to be more of a reflection of the diverse world that we live in.