Growing up, I never felt like the pretty girl.

My dad listened to a lot of James Taylor when I was growing up. We had a couple of his cassettes in the car, and we'd go on a lot of long family car trips. It was either strange musicals or James Taylor - or Whitney Houston. It was quite the combination there.

My first professional gig was 'Once Upon a Mattress' at the Drury Lane Oakbrook... I was in the ensemble. I was one of the ladies in waiting, and I covered Winnifred.

I think the job of art and drama is to hold a mirror up to those things and say, 'What do you think about it?'

Early on in my career, I'd go into the makeup trailer, and they'd spend an hour doing my makeup, and I would hate it. I'd go into the bathroom, wash it off and start over again, which took an enormous amount of time. So I just started doing it myself.

Hip-hop started as this niche moment, and the values of it, the cultures that it carried on its back; language, clothes, the way you wear your clothes, the items that you consume, all came with the music as an art form. And those things helped transform how people buy, shop, speak, engage.

Any company faces big challenges during transformation. People are accustomed to going ahead on the existing track. Even when they know there are problems, the first reaction is to protect the old way.

History is the transformation of tumultuous conquerors into silent footnotes.