My default is not to feel unwelcome. My default is to seek welcome. - 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.

"...I turned down a few projects to pursue this one. I knew there was a sense of what was expected of me, but this play felt so important to me that I had to do it, expectations be damned.”

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.