Ayo Edebiri

“I've always loved theatre. I still do. When I'm sad and I want to cry, I'll start looking at videos of Michael Jeter accepting a Tony.”

“I grew up in a family where my parents were always volunteering at polling places and always making calls and stuff. I have memories of doing my homework at call centers for Elizabeth Warren and Obama.”

“I loved 'Living Single' growing up. All the women on that show inspire me, like Erika Alexander, Kim Fields, Kim Coles, and Queen Latifah.”

“There's so much technical and practical skill that goes into everybody's jobs, and wages should reflect that. Massive companies shouldn't be able to just broadly take advantage of people's hard work and skill.”

“In order to understand comedy, you need to understand what's sad about the world.”

“Yeah, my mom was born-again.”

“Right before prom I got my eyebrows waxed for the first time, and we can see these are not waxable eyebrows.”

“I've worked with actors who are like, 'I don't even want to know where the camera is; I just want to feel like this is a real, human moment.' I really love that; but also I think there's that producer side of me - and also that side of me who wants to make things - where it's actually interesting for me to know what the frame is.”

“I used to go to Erewhon Market and think, 'Oh, what random actor am I going to see here?' Now I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'm the random actor!'”

“People like to see people kiss on TV.”

“When you're in that evangelical space, there's only one absolute truth, and your specific church in a random neighborhood outside Boston is the only arbiter of that.”

“I got off Twitter just for my own mental health. It's kind of amazing. It's one of those social media sites where it's very easy for things to become mean.”

“Check your moles, people. Wear sunscreen, even if you're Black, and check your moles.”

“I'm over the word momentum. I have no interest in the word momentum.”

“Sometimes I'll watch older movies, and often not even that old, and they're using slurs that are unbelievable and people are pretending to be people with disabilities and winning Oscars, and you're like, 'Huh?' We discovered that this was wrong and we've corrected it.”

“I realized: it's O.K. that 'Babe' is one of my favorite movies, because, structurally, it's actually kind of a brilliant movie! These things that I love - there's a reason. I've had taste!”

“SNL' is something that in my bones, I dreamed of as a comedian, as a young kid. That to me is a pinnacle of success.”

“I love when I work with a director and I'm like, 'You have a sense of what you want. You know your vision. That doesn't waver.' But they still are collaborating. They are still asking people their thoughts and their opinions, because that's when a project can shine. We're not just objects.”

“I remember when BLM and Stop Asian Hate and the Supreme Court rollback of Roe v. Wade happened, there kept being these bubbles of thought about a general strike. We need to think about our priorities and what we want out of this society and out of each other.”

“I have very strong feelings that I could share about 'The Mask' that no one needs.”