It was so nice to have someone embrace that and encourage it, because I never knew that I would start my career and that would be called for. So, it … - Lupita Nyong'o

There was so much joy in the making of this film, despite the fact that it’s about such a sad, traumatic experience…We all felt like we were part of something so real and so necessary. It was a joy to go on set every day and tell these real people’s story. Doing this movie, I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.

It's because of the prevalence of whiteness, Eurocentric standards of beauty that we experience this. You know? And it is subconscious. Colorism is the daughter of racism. But sometimes it seems like racism has had amnesia (laughter). You know? And so that's why I wrote this - to hopefully bring it to the fore and people can address it.

I grew up with aunties that had their chests out, they fought the system in all sorts of ways, and in many ways rose to the top of their lines of work.