I can't tell you the number of stories I've told with a female protagonist don't get bought, or they do get bought and get changed drastically. Or, I will literally write into the script different races, and they get cast all-white. I hope that stops and it opens the door for more voices to be heard in movies.

I've been rewritten on past projects and thought, 'That's not what she was - she was this really powerful woman, and there's nothing wrong with that.' I'm going to keep writing them, and hopefully people will start making them.

Sometimes you feel all alone. You come out of a meeting, and something sexist has been said to you: That movie will never be made with that female lead. And you think, 'How am I ever gonna get another job?' When you hear other women having the same experiences, it makes you feel like, 'Well, I'm gonna keep going, and we're gonna fight this system.'

There was an email forwarded to me from a first-grade teacher, and she said she was teaching them civil rights for MLK weekend, and a little first-grader stood up, and he said, 'I can explain segregation,' and proceeded to explain all the scenes from 'Hidden Figures.' And I died because that's everything.