I worked for a company called Population Services International, a social marketing company advocating healthy behaviors. We had a big branding campaign with celebrities to help educate about the proper use of mosquito nets, for example, to help prevent malaria.
As a performer, the thing you want the most is to be your authentic self.
Sometimes you are the only living, walking, breathing version of the Bible that people will ever see. What long-lasting taste are you going to leave in their mouths? A lot of people have left a bad taste. And it's so unfortunate, because God is the best!
I just love new, beautiful music.
I went to an all-girls boarding school in Maryland. I used to laugh at the girls in the theater program - I was pre-med, National Honors Society; I was on that track.
I want to own a comedy club.
Wanda Sykes and I have had similar career trajectories. We're both from the D.C. area. She spent five years working as a contracting specialist for the NSA, and I got my master's in public health.
I can only see what's in front of me, but God can see what's behind, what's ahead of me, what's beside me, and it just makes it so much easier to release control, cuz at the end of the day, if He brought me to it, He's gonna have to bring me through it.
A lot of people hustle differently, and I was like, 'You know what, let me hustle and create, and let me have something to show,' cuz my hustle led to opportunity.
I've been fortunate that the men I surround myself with in the comedy world are really decent people: men who are very aware, who are very respectful, and understand their place and maybe even some of their privilege.
I believe in being diligent but also cut yourself some slack. It's okay in the grand scheme of life.
How many shows on TV do you see young black people, both women and men, really embody a full-fledged human being, flaws and all?
Before 'Insecure,' I was a wedding emcee - a host for weddings. That's a world that a lot of people are not familiar with.
I have a show called 'First Gen' that David Oyelowo is executive producing.
'First Gen' is kind of the ode to my parents and to really all immigrant children who come here with kind of a preemptive expectation placed on them, and then they get there, and they realize the American dream is bigger than, sometimes, what our parents dreamt.
By the time I got to George Washington University, I had been a straight-A student in high school.
There's a lot of negative speak about what it means to be an immigrant. I'm like, 'OK, I don't know where that came from.' We do the dirty jobs. We do the good jobs. We get the job done.
On 'Insecure,' Molly works at a law firm, and there's scenes where her boss doesn't value her voice and doesn't value her efforts. And we had a lot of women tweeting 'Me too' in that situation. We're saying, 'Hey, no more. Not on our watch.'
There's random people calling my phone: 'Your mother gave me your number.' My mother has tried to set me up so many times long-distance.
I have immigrant, African parents. They would say, in their Nigerian accents, 'So you want to be a jester?' And I was like, 'I don't want to be a court jester, Ma. I want to be a comedian.'
