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00:00 I live in imposter syndrome.
00:02 It comes and goes.
00:03 If I don't take my medication, which is like doses of confidence,
00:06 or feeling like, "Oh, I feel success here,"
00:09 then I will generally default to, "Oh no, what?
00:13 This is all wrong," or "I'm a fraud."
00:16 And sometimes I think it's healthy.
00:18 Honestly, it does drive me in that way,
00:21 and it's why I think I'm able to survive.
00:23 And I think finding the benefits of what scares you
00:29 can only help to, I think, provoke greatness.
00:33 You know, I don't want to stop,
00:34 so I have no choice but to persist and just be better.
00:37 Go, shawty. It's my birthday.
00:47 But no one cares because I'm not having a party.
00:49 'Cause I'm feeling sorry for myself.
00:53 Once one entity invests in you,
00:56 then it does open the eyes of others to be like,
00:59 "Okay, well, if I can't have you in this area,
01:01 what do you have here?"
01:02 And I never like to put all my eggs in one basket either,
01:05 so it also helped me to kind of diversify
01:08 what I could do and what I wanted to do.
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01:39 I can visualize what it can do for South LA in particular,
01:44 and then I can see how necessary it is.
01:46 When I was shooting this fourth season of "Insecure,"
01:49 it took an hour out to get a studio to shoot in,
01:52 and I was like, "We're going away from the neighborhood
01:55 that we shoot in, which is down the street from my house,
01:58 because there's no studio spaces."
02:00 And I recognize that the industry is changing,
02:03 but I think there'll always be a need for that here.
02:07 And then the opportunity for jobs to employ people
02:11 within the community, for training programs, for --
02:16 I honestly know that there's so many iconic areas
02:22 in South LA that tourists would be interested in,
02:28 you know, recognizing, like, "This is from 'Boys in the Hood,'
02:30 and this is from 'Love and Basketball.'"
02:32 There's just so many things that could engage the community
02:36 in general that I feel like we need.
02:40 The advice I'd give young creators of color
02:45 who are facing roadblocks would honestly be to,
02:49 you know, kind of build a tunnel around.
02:52 I know that's easier said than done,
02:53 but for me, so much of it came --
02:56 and I speak about this all the time --
02:58 from, like, these other connections that I've had,
03:00 that I've built with people, and just saying,
03:02 "Hey, do you want to do this together?"
03:05 Or, "Hey, what do you need? What can I help you with?"
03:08 And kind of building from there.
03:11 I had countless times where I tried to go through
03:16 this system traditionally,
03:17 whether that's, like, writing a spec script
03:19 to be able to get in a writer's room,
03:21 or working with -- or trying to get representation,
03:25 just being like, "Where do I even start?"
03:27 And it really -- where I started was with the community
03:31 around me that I had built.
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03:36 My mogul era, let me tell you, this year was not fun at all.
03:40 This past year was the first,
03:44 like, this is hard in a different way.
03:47 It's hard in the company way, as opposed to, like,
03:50 "Oh, creatively, I'm stuck.
03:52 This is like, oh, these are real --
03:54 these are real issues that I have to confront.
03:56 They're real needs.
03:58 They're real problems."
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04:03 I was scared that I had only one good idea
04:05 because there was a period of just stagnation
04:08 where I was like, "Oh, maybe 'Awkward Black Girl'
04:11 is what I was supposed to put out into the world
04:14 and inspire somebody else."
04:16 But then, when I got an opportunity again,
04:19 I wasn't about to, like, let that, you know,
04:21 go by the wayside.
04:22 And when I met one good idea,
04:23 one good idea that could be successful,
04:25 you know, one good idea that could open the door,
04:29 and I felt like, early on, like, the door was open,
04:32 and then it just was like, "Nope, that's it.
04:34 That's what you get."
04:35 And so, that second time around,
04:38 it taught me to just take advantage
04:39 of these other opportunities
04:40 and these other ideas that I had.
04:42 ♪♪
04:45 (upbeat music)