Aja Naomi King Quotations

I really care about people, and I would need someone to also genuinely value other human beings and want to be connected with people in the world and to know about other cultures. That might not be a high standard for someone else, but for me, it's really important to try and stick to that.

I think it's well-known that I love all things ABC and Shonda Rhimes - I'm a huge 'Scandal' and 'Grey's Anatomy' fan.

Not everyone's high standards have to be the same thing.

Not to say there's not good TV out there, but I think TV is better when it accurately reflects the world as it is.

We all have our family issues from time to time.

Back when people couldn't read, other people would take newspapers and turn them into theater so that people would know what was going on in the world. That is a powerful thing.

I love the powerful woman who's complicated. There's no push to be one thing or another thing. It's all human. That's what you look for as an actor: characters written and portrayed in the most human way possible.

TV is such a great medium in what it can do in terms of enlightening an audience. We can really inspire and teach people about other people. That's a powerful tool, and that's something that the arts has always been capable of doing.

Words can't describe how one would feel in that moment after doing a test for something you really want but in your heart you don't think you have a chance of getting.

Sometimes as human beings, we're so contradictory - we may say something or do something and completely contradict ourselves. That's what I'm learning to embrace in television - not knowing what's going to happen. I might make a specific choice for myself and then in the next episode the writers might write something that contradicts it.

When you do a play, you have all this time to rehearse and grow into the character. In television, even though you're waiting and waiting and waiting, once you're actually on set engaging in the scene with another actor, time is of the essence.

If you're doing an indie and you have time, sometimes you can do take after take after take, but if you're working in television on that filming schedule, you don't always have the time to do that. You learn very quickly, I think, how essential it is to come in with the strongest choice that you have.

When the doors to television were opened to me, that was quite a surprise. It's been such a gift that there was so much TV and independent film happening in New York that I could be a part of. There was something to satiate my desire to be artistic and creative, especially when it wasn't in the way I originally thought it was going to be.

I grew up in a very suburban neighborhood, so I was used to everything being safe and lovely.