Out lesbian actress Jasika Nicole recently opened up about her experience in Hollywood.

On the importance of representing women of color or a queer woman when it comes to the parts she chooses…

It’s funny, it’s so complicated because I’d love to play a queer woman on a television show but that’s only because I think we need to see more queer women on television, not because it’s the only thing I can play, certainly. Whenever there’s a space that’s lacking, I’d love to be able to slide in. That’s why with, like The Mindy Kaling Project. I was just Facebooking about it today. I can’t tell you — the first time I saw that pilot — I’m not into romantic comedies. That’s not really my go-to genre. When I saw that pilot, just seeing a woman with skin that looked like mine seem so unapologetic and very un-selfconciouss just made such a huge difference to me. It was unbelievable. It made me want to watch her show, even though I’m not into romantic comedies. There’s something about that that I can relate to. And then there are people who don’t have dark skin necessarily but do like romantic comedies and can relate to looking for love in the modern world or whatever. There’s just so much space for people to have recognition within characters of colors or characters that are queer or gender nonconforming and I feel like we don’t give audiences enough credit to be able to handle that kind of stuff.

On being approached to play a lesbian character…

I wish! Never! And then I’m like “Am I not out enough?” I thought it was supposed to be a big deal if you’re an actress and you’re out and you’re proud! Aren’t you supposed to be invited to guest star on Will & Grace and The L Word and stuff? [Laughs] I never got anything! And part of me thinks it’s fine, nobody is trying to make the fact that I’m gay a bigger deal than another actress is not gay, that she’s straight or something. So part of me appreciates that. But there’s another part of me that’s like “You guys, I’m here!” I want to be visible and be a voice that people can appreciate for any reason.

On why there aren’t more women of color who are out…

Girl, I do not know! And I know all the rumors and I don’t want to out anybody or anything. I want to respect people’s privacy but I also know how big a deal it is to have people that look like you be out and proud and vocal about stuff. It just makes me think about when I was growing up and for a very brief period of time actually questioned my sexuality when I was in my teens, it was literally as simple as “I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know what it looks like to be a female of color that’s gay.” It made me feel like I would have been the first person in the entire world. Granted this was before the internet. But I think that things like the Tumblr community, all that stuff is really great for people who feel they’re alone in whatever city they’re in and that they’re absolutely not and they have a community. I just didn’t have anybody that was in the public eye that I could relate to. So you know what you do when that happens is you just squash it down and act like it’s not there and that ends up being really damaging later in your life when you’re at a point where you want to be honest about who you are and it could just be a very lonely thing and I think it’s the smartest decision I made was to move to New York because if I stayed in Alabama. I can’t say that I would be an out woman living in Birmingham, Alabama at this point!

Read the full interview on AfterEllen.