I'm pretty relaxed on what people should be able to do as long as they're not hurting anybody else.
Luke Cage is using his open hand instead of a closed fist. It's a little disrespectful but it's very effective. Some people call it a pimp slap, we call it smack-fu. He's doing you a favour by hitting you with an open hand. It hurts, it renders you unconscious but you live.
As professionals, we just try to keep the jokes to a minimum, when we're in a certain situation. When we're not doing that, we're joking.
I met some people in college and I kept cracking away until someone pointed me in the right direction.
The awkward thing is the people in the room besides us. It's not us. It's just the 20 or 30 people that are around on set, who normally wouldn't be on set. That's always interesting.
My mother wanted to be an actress. She wanted to follow her dreams and she never really got a chance to do that. I feel like I'm following her dream in a way. She's proud of me for doing what I wanted to do, but at the same time, I'm kind of taking up where she left off.
Some people get divorced, they leave the person for a couple of years, then they remarry. Relationships are very, very strange.
I think when people talk about art imitating life, you're in real time.
When you're the lead and on most of the call sheets, some people have expectations of you and whether you like it or not, you kind of set the tone.
If things are not working out, they just stop going forward.
As an actor, you learn, every time you work.
Dialogue is not always the best way to show emotion, to show your thought process, or to reveal yourself, as a character.
That's how it works in Westerns: the hero is minding his own business and trying to make a living, but he does something, the villain finds out about it and they have to have a showdown. So it's kind of a Western set to hip hop music.
The primary thing that I enjoy about Luke Cage is that he has a morality about him but it's conflicted. He's never sure what the right move is, but he at least contemplates it. He's a not a rash character. It's that thoughtfulness that I really identify with.
When you take the job, you never think about how many days you're going to take bullets. Sometimes you go on set and you're thinking, "Ah, a day when I don't have to get shot. This is going to be a nice day."
I like to take a break, but at the same time, I think most actors are not very good at sitting around doing nothing because we like to work.
Part of acting is always just being available emotionally and open to people.
I respond to powerful women. I'm not intimidated by that, I like that, it's not something I shy away from, so I don't want women who are looking for me to take care of them. To me, that's a turn-off. I respond to strong, powerful, independent women.
Sometimes when you do things right, there's no results.
Law enforcement has always had informants and people they've had to deal with, who walk a certain line. They're choosing between the lesser of two evils. They're befriend one person to gain access to another person, who's a bigger fish.
My family, they're not really that involved in what I do. Career-wise, they're very supportive. They're involved after the fact. I don't tell them anything usually until I'm finished filming it or mid-way through filming it.
Comic book heroes are an important part of our culture.
We pride ourselves on all being unique shows.
Jessica Jones is very unique, and we are all in awe of the response from the public. It seems that everyone connected with the character, and we enjoyed shooting it.
So often, when you're playing the lead in your own show, it is all about you.
