00:00You know, even when I read the script, if anybody knows me, my son Jeffrey is my life.
00:05And when I first read the script and I saw this woman, Leomi, who is Brian Banks' mother,
00:12how she advocated for her son and everything.
00:15She did everything that a mother tries to do.
00:18She put him in football.
00:20She put his brother in basketball.
00:21They were always active.
00:23She wanted to keep them from the streets, and I related to that.
00:26And a mother, and I'll speak to the mothers, but a parent's worst nightmare is something like this that has happened to Brian Banks.
00:33And when I read the script, it resonated with me so much, and I said, I gotta audition for this movie.
00:41It was very hard being a comedic actress of trying to get it because they see me as making you laugh all the time.
00:47But literally, it was my son Jeffrey that propelled me, even in my audition, of what would I do if this happened to my son,
00:55which is our son, our nephews, our cousins.
00:58Brian, to me, is the pinnacle of the example of what it means to supersede your conditions when you believe in yourself.
01:06I mean, the brother was, you know, spent a third of his life behind bars.
01:12How do you go in jail, come out more educated than you were when you went in?
01:17But, not even that, because I'm going to blow up your spot, Eugene.
01:23You come out more educated, you manage to learn the legal system, you manage to represent yourself,
01:28you get the CIP of the California Innocence Project on your side, and you exonerate yourself,
01:34you clear your name, you take the right risks, and then after that, you manage to get into the NFL.
01:39You know, I strongly feel that everything that we do in life, everything that we think,
01:53everything that we are a part of, it all starts from within the choices that we make.
01:58And I think that we have to encourage our young men and women to become more empowered
02:04in self-awareness, self-love, and self-understanding.
02:08I think the more you know about you, the more you understand you,
02:11the more you find value and love within yourself,
02:15you can then project that energy from within, outward, onto the people that you come in contact with.
02:20But, if you continue to keep moving through life unaware of yourself,
02:28then I think that's how you will approach life with a lot of uncertainty,
02:32and you will make a lot of decisions in life that you shouldn't make.
02:35So, I think it's important that for our young men to be patient, to know yourself,
02:43and then within knowing yourself, you can know what you want to do and how you want to do it,
02:48what makes sense for you, what doesn't make sense for you.
02:50Also, we need to become more aware of the system, aware of our judicial system.
02:56How should we interact and deal with police?
Comments