Dee Rees

Having to stake out your identity and have people question whether or not you're being yourself was a tension that I could relate to.

I'm not a writer that writes every day. I just kind of have ideas. I jot them down when I have them, and when I have enough, I just start. And for me, I start more around noon, and I'm all about feeling. Once there's a theme, I can't not write.

In an industry that's uncertain and when you're in a lot of situations that are anxiety-causing, to have someone there who has your back unconditionally and cares for you and the material and would give anything to make sure everything is OK, makes you feel so much better. It gives you a sense of security as an artist.

Knowing what you want is not a shortcoming. Let people deal with their own anxieties.

With friendship, it's hard sometimes - you don't outgrow your friends, but you do question how people are friends to you in different ways and how it's okay to cultivate other relationships outside of that.

I'm interested in characters and relationships.

It's okay to be yourself and to love and accept yourself however you are.

With 'Pariah,' at the time, I had just come out. I had a coming out experience, and I was writing about it, transposing my experience as an adult: What would it have been like if I had been a teenager in Brooklyn? The funny thing was people thought I was from Brooklyn. I had to be like, 'No, I'm from Nashville.'

For me, books were my source of affirmation. Alice Walker, Audrey Lord - it was these authors who wrote about their experiences. It was this weird thing where I was censored in terms of what I could watch but not in terms of what I could read.

You can't be limited by your own experience.

I was never physically abused, but when I came out to my parents late in life, when I was 27, they definitely had an intervention.

You're your own person, and it's about you. I'm my own person, and it's about me. Everyone has their own life.