00:00We are in a literacy crisis, I do think Akeelah and the Bee coming back could fix it.
00:06Oh my gosh! Akeelah needs to come back as a professor.
00:10Absolutely. She's teaching now.
00:12Who are we calling for this? Okay, so you described earlier Akeelah and the Bee being this kind of first
00:17big audition for you as like the lead, right?
00:20That's your movie. Tell me a little bit about the first time you heard about Akeelah and the Bee, and
00:24what interested you in her character?
00:26Well, my mom read the script, and I'll be honest, as a kid I was not really knowing how to
00:31really read scripts at that point in time.
00:33So my mom was always reading the material and then seeing if it was something she felt that I should
00:38do.
00:38Because she was very big on like what you perform and how it speaks to you, especially me growing up.
00:43She really was specific about the kind of material she would even want me a part of.
00:47And so when she read Akeelah and the Bee, I just remember her walking into the room,
00:51Kiki gotta do this movie! Kiki gotta do this movie! And we were like, are you okay?
00:55She's like, yes, this movie is Akeelah and the Bee! It's Akeelah and the Bee!
00:59We're like, what is it about? Is this the animation? You know what I mean?
01:02Like what it seemed, she was so dramatic, but the name was so not.
01:06It was like Akeelah and the Bee, she's in tears, what is this?
01:09And so she's like, we gotta sit down as a family and we gotta read this movie together.
01:13And so we all like played roles and did pretty much a family table read of Akeelah and the Bee.
01:18And we all got really emotional at the end because it was just, even as a kid,
01:24I understood what it was like to see this little girl go for her goals and her dreams
01:30because I was actually doing the same thing.
01:32We'll just wait!
01:32And then, home, the way I'm going to play a little bit at the end!
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