Hollywood is making strides to portray more diverse characters onscreen, but there's certainly still a long way to go. Or as actress and comedian Natasha Rothwell puts it, "It's not a secret that the media that's out there to consume tends to look a certain way."

Which is why, through her roles on shows like Insecure *and movies like * Love, Simon, out today, she's working to "shift the paradigm and challenge expectations." Here, she shares why true inclusivity in movies and TV can be achieved only by showcasing the multifaceted, complicated, and sometimes mundane nature of all people.

I've always been kind of precocious, but my journey sort of solidified when I was in college and majored in theater. That's how I knew I wanted to spend my life writing, telling, and performing stories. One of the biggest things I learned was not to tell myself no before someone else. As someone who's creative, I know the inner critic can be really loud. Early on in my career, I would just listen to it and tell myself no.

There are enough people in the world who want to tell you not to do something, especially if you're a woman and especially if you're a woman of color.

As time went on, I realized there are enough people in the world who want to tell you not to do something, especially if you're a woman and especially if you're a woman of color. I didn't want to add to that voice of negativity, so I chose to really believe in my ideas and value my opinions and fight for what I thought was good and funny and fun—the stories I thought were worth telling. If someone else says no, which is inevitable in this business, that's a different a fight than fighting yourself before you even get to that point.

You don't do this for a living if you think that success is going to be immediate or if you think it's going to look a specific way; it's not going to be immediate, and it will never look how you think it will. You definitely have to earn your stripes and go into auditions and be told no. It’s a mind game you have to play. But for me, the drive to keep going is this deep-seated passion and desire to not give up. When you know you're meant to do something and you know you love doing something more than anything else in the world, a no from someone else is not going to stop you. It didn't stop me.

In an industry that looks a certain way and values a certain aesthetic, you can face resistance that doesn't necessarily live in the audition room. It just sort of lives in how you navigate the industry. There's no specific story where someone looked at me and said, "No! Too black, too fat." No one's had the gall to say that to my face, but you learn about what casting directors tastes are. It's not a secret that the media that's out there to consume tends to look a certain way. It’s up to me to consciously go into rooms and shift the paradigm and challenge expectations by being creative with the material that I'm given and finding a real grounded way to present audition material or writing samples, as it were.