If you get your foot in the door doing one kind of part, that's the kind of role they call you for. I can't say I resent it - then I would resent my whole career.
After my first year on 'Gossip Girl,' everybody said, 'You've got to do a big commercial movie, ride this wave.'
There's an inherent idea that if a Black executive producer and a Black director are going to do a movie based on a Black writer's book that everybody is going to be Black.
We were kind of caught up in the genre trap. We didn't really have a lot of artistic freedom. They wanted us to go into a certain direction, so they could promote us easier.
Within me, I knew I would never be a first-rate producer. I wasn't tough enough.
This constant pressure from record companies to come up with a hit single or something like that, I find completely tiresome.
With kids you can take a chance but casting a guy at 45 is different. You don't discover somebody that age. If an actor hasn't made it by that time he probably has no talent.
Directors, like actors, get typecast. And because I've had great success with comedy and horror and TV shows, that's basically what I'm kind of offered.
I am able to carry storylines. When you're good at what you do, you're going to work. That's a good thing. But from the standpoint of being an attraction, sometimes too much isn't good. So it's a difficult fine line.
