"I think that as a black girl you grow up internalizing all these messages that say you shouldn’t accept your hair or your skin tone or your natural features, or that you shouldn’t have a voice, or that you aren’t smart"

"I think already, at age 12, I was like, Yeah, people are racist. Why are y’all surprised?"

"Being an actor is one of the few professions where, as an adult, you get to play!"

"But I’m not tired of talking about hair in the sense of it being an empowering thing. I know when I used to chemically straighten mine, I did it because I wasn’t comfortable with my natural hair. I thought it was too poofy, too kinky. So for me, personally, when I started wearing it natural, it felt like I was blossoming because I was letting go of all the dead hair and all the parts of me that had rejected my natural state."

"I think as a queer person, kind of everything I do in the public sphere is drag in some capacity"

"When I reflect on it, I don’t remember being very upset about it. I remember feeling that I don’t give a flying f**k what these racist people think of me. I think bigots don’t really bother me"

"Social media really shaped me and my generation and our ability to organize or express our thoughts"

"I noticed that whenever I was trying to talk about social justice and how Black women are framed in the media, quite ironically, I would be framed in a certain way that would demonize me and take away the value of my point"

"I don’t think there’s ever been a moment where I’ve thought social media is not for me, because I’m obsessed with social media. I have three meme accounts!"

"So many times in the conversation, [colorism is used] as a straight up denial of blackness"

"I realized that when my norms did not fit those of the world around me, it was time to change the world norms"

"I describe my future as being policy-adjacent"

"But what I love so much about the collision between time and space that has happened right now is the fact that I am in no way the face of anything, because when I look at so many of my peers, there are people doing the same work, more work, different work than I am"

"I'm never going to find myself in positions in which I genuinely regret what I'm doing."

"Originality and authenticity are synonymous to me in that, on a spiritual, more emotional level, it’s about staying grounded in who you are"

"Fashion innovation is hard, but when people come in with their own aesthetic, it’s really inspiring"

"The moments when I stop worrying about how I’m being perceived are really freeing."

"We want this spectrum of ourselves portrayed in every physical possible spiritual, mental, emotional way that is so much more than saying I am a brown woman, or I am a black woman on TV, but saying, I am a fraction of my community"

"The best learning happens when we give ourselves permission to fumble through something new"

"Finding what fulfills us is the ultimate success"

"My 20s has been a jarring experiment in figuring out how to give myself space to be mediocre at things"

"I feel like I’m only here because of the people who have come before me"

"The story of immigration is something that is undoubtedly tied to mine"

"Not every attempt of mine would be a surefire success"

"It's OK to have multiple passions and to pursue them in various capacities"

"Allow yourself the freedom to explore different fields"

"It's OK to not have all the answers"

"My parents instilled this idea that learning is a lifelong adventure, whether that's in a classroom or out in the world"

"Let yourself be bad at things"

"I have an unreasonable belief that I should be good immediately, and that's no way to discover new paths"

"Education has always been an integral part of my life"

"The question of why should the audience care is something that we’re always having to answer"

"Being Black and Iranian is something that even subconsciously plays into what I bring to a role"

"Having to pour so much thought into basic survival doesn’t give your brain space to think about, Well, why are we living?"

"One of the biggest exercises in being curious has been the first step of self-work, of talking to myself about being bad, and allowing myself to be absolutely an amateur with no goals of being advanced at something"

"It’s overwhelming to think about how broken some of these systems are, how imperfect some of our tools for change are"

"Young people rise to the occasion time and time again, especially when we’re faced with things that are of deep concern to us"

"“It’s not about appearances or needing to seem like I’m good at everything"

"My sense of audacity came from the fact that I felt so well represented in my home, from what I was looking at, from the fact that my parents formed what we call an alternate curriculum of books, folklore, fairytales, where everybody was global, Black, Brown, from every different part of the world"

"We need every voice. We need every person"

"It may look like helicopter parenting, but in Black culture and Iranian culture, that interconnectedness is deeply important"

"At the age of 14, I had a mic in my hand and they were asking me about representation and about topics that I think not many 14-year-olds have a chance to discuss"

"We cannot rely on the status quo, and we will need to pursue unconventional paths"

"My education allowed me to speak more confidently about the things that I advocate for in my work"

"For me, optimism is a belief in self"

"On a set, you’re a character. Everything about you is altered. In the tent, the goal is to be yourself."

"Leaving my teens is very intimidating to me."

"we are continuously undoing the works of how media, in particular, has been weaponized against minorities of any kind"

"We are not here to know, we are here to learn"

"The journey into becoming an actor wasn’t one that was necessarily anchored in this desire to be on screen, but more so anchored in this desire to be a part of storytelling"