On 'Insecure,' Molly works at a law firm, and there's scenes where her boss doesn't value her voice and doesn't value her efforts. And we had a lot of women tweeting 'Me too' in that situation. We're saying, 'Hey, no more. Not on our watch.'
If you had asked me, did I have everything nailed down and wired about what I wanted to do, and was I following some real plan? No. In fact, by the time I was in my mid-20s or even late-20s, and I was still in the law firm, I really was starting to get a little nervous that I didn't know what I was going to do.
The part in 'Philadelphia' where I represent the law firm that's firing Tom Hanks, that was a hard part for me because I lost one of my best friends to AIDS, and it was hard for me to play a part that wasn't sympathetic to someone with AIDS.
The summer before my third year of law school, I worked at a law firm in Washington, D.C. I turned 25 that July, and on my birthday, my father happened to be playing in a local jazz club called Pigfoot and invited me to join him. I hadn't spent a birthday with him since I was 3, but I agreed.
I thought I would, you know, go to college, get to law school, finish, and then get a job and work as a lawyer, but that proved to be not a good fit for me.
Always it gave me a pang that my children had no lawful claim to a name.
The only thing urban about me is the parties. I have almost always been a suburbanite. I got a car for my graduation. I want to have a manicured lawn and have my son go to a good college.
The funny thing is that I'm the girl who no one sees at the beach. Ask anyone who's traveled with me. Normally, I'm in so many layers, I look like Lawrence of Arabia!
For me, it was watching the New York Giants growing up, with Bill Parcells and Lawrence Taylor and that whole crew coming up through the '80s. And then, as I moved on to college, I thought I'd want to coach for sure.
I'm in the real world, some people try to steal from me, and I stop them, frequently, take them to court. I love a good lawsuit. It's fun.
So I will say it with relish. Give me a hamburger but hold the lawsuit.
Lawsuits make you care. I think the PR makes you care. But personally, when I got out in 1983, do I think they cared about me? No.
But the courts have dismissed the lawsuits against me and Lee Brown.
It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.
I'm so free-spirited. Everyone has a me inside them: that loud girl that just wanna go, 'Ayyyy!' No matter if you a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, it comes out.
I always get stopped by security and immigration, telling me, 'Tell me who the terrorist is, or we won't stamp your passport!' The last time that somebody did that to me - at LAX, actually - I was like, 'Hey, don't ever ask a brown girl that in an American airport!'
You used to have to come to America for 18 months and drive around in a van, trying to get radio stations to play your song. But I remember One Direction's manager telling me that the first time they came to America, they hadn't released a song - they'd only been on 'The X Factor.' But there were 2,000 fans waiting at LAX airport.
Imagine if every airport would blast Brian Eno. I bet going through security wouldn't be as difficult. I can't imagine someone being aggressive with me with Brian Eno music pumping through the terminals at LAX.
For me, I start at the place that my characters are human. I start at the place that they are onions that are layered and meant to be peeled, just as we as human beings are.
I look at a basketball laying on the ground, and it makes me think of something. Popcorn ball. How 'bout a spicy popcorn ball? That is how my mind is always working.
