I was the jokester, the one who made the family laugh. by Nicole Beharie

I was the jokester, the one who made the family laugh.

Nicole Beharie

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Categorized in : Laughing Made

I think it's a great time to be a person of color and with talent. And actually, to be a woman as well. Our show is one of the most diverse television shows on television right now.

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There are expectations in how you play your character as a black woman, to be sassy and the same kind of feel, as if there are no quirky black women. I struggle with those things constantly, trying to add dimension to my work, and that's the goal, too.

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Stone Mountain, Georgia, still had Ku Klux Klan marches, and I had a wild and courageous mother who'd put us in the car to watch them. She wanted us to know those things existed.

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I kind of feel like I have grown as just like a human being as a human being by being able to adapt and adjust and know that like you can't ever rest on your laurels, you have to sort of wake up; you actually have to be present.

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My mom has an English accent, so we always referred to the trunk as the 'boot.' And then, suddenly, we moved to Georgia and I would say things like 'open the boot' with a bit of an accent, and I quickly realized I had to adapt; that kind of thing will get you beat up!

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I've been fortunate to work with Alfre Woodard and Jeffrey Wright; people who are artists, have careers, longevity and full lives. That looks good to me.

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I went to Juilliard in New York and used to do cabarets just for fun. Occasionally, I would get together with a jazz musician and play at a restaurant for cash. And I've done some background vocals for recording artists.

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I was kind of a bully, even though I'm tiny, 5' 2". As a child, I'd boss other kids around and dress my little brother up, just putting on shows, singing and dressing up.

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Everything about us black people is complicated, us being here, being a minority, being a woman, all those things are complicated.

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When I was younger, my father was in the Foreign Service and we lived in Nigeria, Panama, and London, but for the most part I grew up in the South and D.C. I got the travel bug as a little person and I've bounced around a lot.

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