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American television, for all its faults, still has a black presence in shows and even in commercials. You'll see black people in automobile ads, black women starring on their own television shows. We don't see that on British television.

The roles that I feel I get, or handed to me, or whatever, are not that interesting. I don't think it's a problem that's specific to black women. I think it's a problem that's specific to movie-making in America.

Black audiences are hard. They always think they're better than you. So you got to come with a little extra to satisfy them.

So now I feel I'm lucky in the respect that I can sort of pick a little more carefully, which is tricky because as a black actress, there aren't that many roles to pick from.

One of the things about being a minority actor is that you don't have that opportunity as some of your counterparts to keep that flow, to constantly be going from one thing to the other, so when you see really great performances out there by some black folks, you know it's coming from somewhere deep, because they just don't work as much.

There is a class system in acting just like in anything else. Black females fall in a category below black male actors.

So often when Black men have to play roles on TV, we're either the noble savage or we're completely a savage, and there's no nuance.

As a black actress you've got to work doubly hard. But it doesn't ever get me to the point where I give up on myself. It just motivates me to be more prepared, focus and disciplined. That's why I care so much about doing black films and making sure that we represent and are represented correctly.

There are actually quite high profile British TV star cameos in it that you probably wouldn't even notice, that the British wouldn't even notice, let alone the American audience.