Set your own standards and be comfortable.Įxactly, and Kita has watched many things test the relationships of the couples, especially Charles and Stacy. If you have people around you that say too much negativity, that’s the issue that’s the problem there! Don’t make it your problem. But as far as the stigma, take your time until you get it right, and don’t listen to people who say too much negativity. She’s taking so many notes on what to do and what not to do by looking at the married and engaged couples that she should be really smart when it comes to relationships. Everybody’s at a certain place for a reason, and with Kita, she doesn’t want to date right now until she finds the right guy, but if you notice, she’s taking notes on what her brother’s doing, what Joyful Drake’s character is doing and that’s actually smart. My thing is when we start judging and labeling and talking about somebody’s lifestyle, then we don’t have time to focus on what’s going on in our life. Cassie wasn’t single, but there’s something I like to call the “single woman stigma.” There are people who believe single women who dish out advice to couples don’t really know what they’re talking about or are bitter in some way. I really like the dynamic of both characters and to see that you completely develop both. I went to Columbia College, and I studied theatre there, so a lot of the stuff I was using and portraying Cassie were tricks I got from being in theatre school. That is what I call training ! I had to really train to be Cassie. Oh, okay, so you had to really dig deep to play her. For Cassie, I had to actually work on and develop being Cassie. Those two are total opposites, but the reason why I related to Cassie is because I grew up in the inner-city, but I went to school in the suburbs for the last two years of high school. Cassie’s so shy and she’s an introvert and, you know, she’s just so withdrawn. She is 100 percent different than Cassie from Lincoln Heights. It really does, and although she’s very relatable, how is Kita different from your previous roles? Everybody is kind of like, ‘Oh, what am I going to do in this situation?’ But Kita is pretty much like, ‘Look, this is what I want to do and this is who I am as a person.’ That speaks volume. If you look at a lot of the episodes, people are going the Kita asking her for her advice because she’s so outspoken and genuine. You can have a great job, have a beautiful apartment and be the one that people ask for advice. How important is it for young African American women to see the independence of Kita?Įxtremely important. The fact that she has a job and is bringing in a steady income, that says a lot about a person. They talk about her accent or her dialect, but they never say that she’s a single girl living in a fabulous apartment and she has her own sense of style and she’s independent. Also, I like her independence, and I have to say that ‘cause a lot of people don’t talk about how independent she is. What influences did you draw from to develop Kita’s character? As a matter of fact, one of the executives emailed me, and she was like, ‘Ooh, your script is hot!’ That’s all I have to say. I think that I spoke it up so much that started asking me what kind of guy Kita would date, and they say that it’s going to happen. Can fans expect for Kita to have a man in the second season?

Erica hubbard