In an ideal world, I'd be able to do my shows in my pajamas. Luckily I've got one of the best stylists in the business, Rebecca Allen - she knows what looks good on camera and gives it a sexy kick.

I was in California when this journalist made a blanket statement about the fact that she did not think that black men and women had the kind of love relationship that Rebecca and Nathan had in Sounder.

The word 'sister' evokes an ideal of connection and support, like the friendships that made Rebecca Wells's 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood' and Ann Brashares's 'The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants' into best-selling novels and successful films.

I have an amazing stylist; she's called Rebecca Corbin Murray... I go around to her living room, and it's sort of exploding with dresses, and we go through them all, and she's so good at picking things she knows I'll like, and we work together. She's taught me absolutely everything; she's brilliant.

'House of Style' changed my life. I literally had no experience in front of a TV camera before, and there I was taking over for Rebecca Romijn. My exposure heightened instantly.