00:00So I have this poem called An Owe To My Hood, and I had to do poetry on the train for money to stay in school one year.
00:08So I'm on the train.
00:09Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.
00:11Wait, wait, I'm not making fun.
00:12You hear that line?
00:13I used that one.
00:14My name is Dominique Fishback.
00:15I go to Pace University, and I'm here reciting my poetry, asking you strangers for your hard-earned money,
00:20because if I don't get this money, I won't get my college degree.
00:23Now how Brooklyn black girl statistics would that be?
00:26I mean, even Brooklyn is banking on me down.
00:28You're about to be a stardom.
00:29Forget about me.
00:43Hi, my name is Dominique Fishback, and I'm here on the set of my Essence shoot, and I'm so excited.
00:49It was such a fun vibe, so many amazing looks.
00:52I don't even know how they're going to choose.
00:54I think definitely a playlist always changes everything.
00:57So it can be reggae or my ladies' night album, and then I just kind of feel the vibes,
01:04and then I just go with the flow and let my body do something.
01:08I feel like every character that I play or every role that is calling me is often dealing with something that I'm dealing with in my life,
01:15just in terms of energy, and I've been learning that we all have masculine and feminine energy inside of us,
01:22and we're all here learning how they can be harmonious, how they can come into union within us and find balance.
01:28And I think that it was an honor for me to play Dre because she was navigating that energy across the spectrum,
01:34a lot of wounded masculine, a lot of wounded feminine.
01:37And so because I was able to dive into that character, I think I grew from her expense.
01:45If I'm not being creative, I can't sleep. It keeps me up at night.
01:49It keeps coming back. It's like, if I try to ignore it, I get something like Project Power with Jamie Foxx,
01:56or I get Swarm and there's Donald and Billy and Chloe and all of these people who do music.
02:02The thing that I think saved me the most is the fact that when I started acting in a program when I was 15,
02:08in order to act, you had to write your own stuff.
02:11So I started writing spoken word poetry and monologues and things.
02:15And so I think there's obvious, I feel like casting directors talk about this often.
02:20When you go into a room, they can feel the energy of an actor that really wants to please, right?
02:24But that energy is not always so welcoming, and sometimes you just need to pull back and accept yourself in a space.
02:31Because when you write your own stuff, you don't feel so out of control or dependent upon somebody else seeing you or giving you an opportunity.
02:41It's the blackest installment of Transformers because you have Stephen Caple Jr. directing it
02:46and being responsible for the energy and the vibe and the culture and the music.
02:52And he wanted the movie to take place in New York.
02:57And originally, I think it was Queens, but Anthony Ramos is from Brooklyn.
03:01He's a friend of mine. We were friends before this.
03:04And so when Anthony did it, it just so happened that when Stephen wanted me, I am from Brooklyn too.
03:09So then our characters get to be from Brooklyn.
03:11And a fun fact, we both get to shout out our hoods in the movie.
03:16So I can't wait for East New York to be in the theater like, what up?
03:19Because nobody talks about East New York.
03:20Everybody talks about Bed-Stuy, Brownsville, Canarsie.
03:22People don't know East New York.
03:24They're like, East Brooklyn? No.
03:25Not East Brooklyn. East New York. Brooklyn.
03:29And that is a wrap on my Essence 2.
03:32Woo!
03:36Thank you so much.
03:37Thank you, guys.
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