JODIE TURNER-SMITH

I've always been 'other' in all the spaces that I've been in. Even when I first moved to America, just the idea that I was a dark-skinned black girl from England with an accent. It's one thing to be a black girl, but it's another to be a dark black girl. I was chastised for that. I was chastised for the way I spoke.

The fact that I'm being cast in a show to play a female lead and I'm the dark-skinned Black woman with short hair, it's so incredible.

That callousness that comes from feeling like you have to survive on your own - I really empathized with that.

I don't really believe in coincidence.

People are making a lot more noise about representation and diversity. But I think modeling is one of the professions where people can be kind of racist.

I understand we love to talk about black girl magic, but sometimes that is a term that allows people to put us in this character like we're not real people that feel real things.

I am deeply moved by sculptures of powerful women.

What's unique about America is that the country itself was built upon oppression, it's in the very foundation.

I went to business school so what they teach you in business school was that success is about positioning yourself to get lucky. It's not just about how hard you work. It is also about a little bit of luck. To position yourself to catch the luck when it comes.

There was this wave of people who were upset that I was possibly married to a white man.

I read the 'Nightflyers' novella and knowing that it was something that had been written by George R.R. Martin, knowing how those stories kind of go, I was really curious to see what happened to my character in the source material.

I'm learning there are certain things I have to really keep for myself.

I didn't come to L.A. thinking, okay, I'm going to be an actor, so my progression was just kind of organic, starting in print modeling, which I was far less successful in, then acting in television commercials.

What I love about my parents and Jamaican families is that exuberance we have, which I think is where I get my joy from, my energy and my attitude.

I think about what I grew up seeing, what I didn't see growing up, and what it felt like when I did see someone who I thought that I could relate to, just living their life on screen.

No offense to anybody from Pittsburgh, but Pittsburgh wasn't for me.

I'm from Peterborough, which is two hours north of London.

The first job I booked was on 'True Blood.' I played a blood siren.

In America, interracial dating or marriage is not something that is as accepted. Certain people feel strongly against it, in both communities. I felt it from the black community. It is so complicated. I don't want to give it too much energy.

Even with my family, I feel sort of 'other.' I'm the only one of my siblings who wasn't born in Jamaica. For a long time, I didn't feel very connected to Jamaican culture, but because I was raised so heavily with that cultural influence, I realized that my inner monologue is a Jamaican woman.

We definitely experience racism in England and different levels of oppression as well. Anywhere affected by colonialism there's certain kinds of race relations and class relations going on.

I watched the Sandra Bland documentary and her tape itself over and over and over and over again, and just the reality of that, the fear in that.

While I might not have a specific experience that is fully American, there is still a knowledge, something that I logically understand as a black woman and a black woman who is existing in America and a black woman who is in the diaspora that are just known quantities that I think anyone can relate to who is black.

England has gone off the rails.

When I first started in modeling, I went back to England, and it was really hard, because I would go around to the agencies and they would be like, 'We already have one mixed-race black girl.'