And then Octavia, I open up her books and the protagonist is a Black girl. And both the Blackness and the youth matter here, that it was like, she was writing people who were 15 years old and who already had a sense of destiny and a sense of, the world needs to change, and I’m going to shape that. I’m going to be a part of that. And she was very solution-oriented in her writing, she was very practical in her writing, so everything is very clear. You’re not going to read Octavia and come away confused.

When I was in high school, there was a book by James MacGregor Burns, a wonderful historian, called The Lion and the Fox, about FDR. And it was about his personality, his character, his early years in Hyde Park, his polio experience and… I remember that so vividly as the first real, live history book that I love so much. And I later met him, and have gotten to know him as a colleague, and he’s about 30 years older than I am, and I couldn’t wait to tell him, “You were the one who made it happen.

One was seeing Warren Mitchell in Death of a Salesman when I was 18. I thought it was the most amazing piece of acting. The other was seeing my sister Sorcha (1) in Brian Friel's version of Three Sisters when I was 23. I'd trained as a musician, but I saw that and thought: "Well, now I know how to play Irina (2)." A few years later, I did.

Well, my mom had me at 22 and my sister at 24. When I think about her trying to raise these two young girls in Manhattan, having grown up in an incredibly conservative family and her having a more progressive calling for a more liberal life… It was my mother’s bravery, and my mother’s pursuit of her creative life that made it possible for me to have the one I currently have.

pick one job and delegate all the other tasks.

she convinced me to use a Bolex. Then suddenly I got obsessed

I would say start off small, build from there.

I tried to get funding to shoot this film and couldn’t—nobody wanted to touch it, you know?

I am my target audience

I prefer not to compartmentalize my life.