Hi everyone and thank you for tuning in to the 340th episode of Awards Chatter, the Hollywood

reporters awards podcast. I'm the host Scott Feinberg and my guest today is

an actress who is always so good that people tend to take her for granted.

She is perhaps best known for her work in

Ava Duvernay's 2019 limited series when they see us, for which she received the

best actress in a limited series or TV movie Emmy nomination.

But she has also made memorable contributions

to a wide assortment of other projects.

Art House films, such as 2004's Ray and 2011's The Help, sharing in the Best Ensemble's SAG Award nomination for the

former and win for the latter, as well as 2014's Get On Up, 2016's The Birth of a Nation, and 2018's If Beale Street could talk.

Big studio films, like 2000's Men of Honor and 2014's The Taking of Pelham one two three. TV series like Quantico on which she was a regular from 2015 through 2017.

Limited series like 2012's missing and 2015's The Book of Negroes, and TV movies like 2009's

gifted hands the Ben Carson story, 2012's abducted the Carlina White story story and most recently in Christine Swanson's

2020 lifetime movie The Clark Sisters First Ladies of Gospel which pulled in

massive ratings when it went on the air in April, and for which her portrayal

of pioneering gospel musician and choral director Dr. Maddie Moss Clark is generating widespread

Emmy Buzz, Miss Ingenue Ellis.

Over the course of our conversation, the 51-year-old and I discussed the fateful events that led

her from Mississippi to Broadway to Hollywood, what it was like to professionally bust out of the gate, but then

experience a number of very lean years.

What the last 15 months or so have been like for her, encompassing the release of when they see us,

her unexpected Emmy nomination, and then the tremendous reception for her work in the Clark

...