Monica Lewinsky

And I think, you know,

really embracing my history has helped me be able to own the entirety of who I am unapologetically.

And so, yes, it is something that I bring to the screen.

It's something I bring to different characters.

People often joke on me of like, I do a lot of historical period pieces, you know?

And I don't think that's coincidental.

I think I am drawn to this idea of inspecting,

my history and wanting to understand it more.

I played years ago, there was a character, Rosalie, in a TV show called Underground and it was about this group of folks who were enslaved on a plantation and they rose up and ran away and what that journey looked like, right?

And I went into that project a month after my dad passed

And in the project, my character, Rosalie, is the product of a Black woman and, unfortunately, the product of what is referred to in the show as the slave massa.

And I just remember feeling in different scenes, we shot on an actual plantation.

Wow.

And feeling like, you know...

I don't entirely know how I'm going to actually execute this scene.

There's a scene in the pilot of Underground in which my character is being whipped.

And we know the historical context of that, right?

And Misha Green, the creator, the co-creator and co-showrunner of Underground, she also created Lovecraft Country.

Right.

She and I initially really butt heads on how to do this scene.