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Carmen Ejogo on her acting career: 'I'm a hustler. I just get on with it'

22:43
Carmen Ejogo talks 'True Detective' and co-star Mahershala Ali
James Okungu/ABC News
Angela Williams
ByAngela Williams
May 29, 2019, 6:06 PM

Carmen Ejogo set her mind to becoming an actor, but then made her own rules about how she would make it happen.

"I was a jack of all trades," Ejogo said in a recent appearance on "Popcorn with Peter Travers." "But at some point I had to make that decision to take it really seriously. So I started writing letters to favorite agents. And got feedback and got lucky."

She added, "I got an agent without having gone to drama school, and was just out doing it. I'm one of those. I'm a hustler. I just get on with it.

Mahershala Ali and Carmen Ejogo in a scene from "True Detective."
Warrick Page/HBO

Download the all new "Popcorn With Peter Travers" podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Tunein, Google Play Music and Stitcher.

Now Ejogo may be poised to take home her first Emmy for her role opposite Mahershala Ali in HBO's "True Detective" crime drama. The role has proven to be one of her favorites.

"The fact that this is a character that is allowed to self-actualize over eight episodes and really flourish as a woman that has had a family, that has spent good years trying to be the crutch to a man that needed that sort of support, and has found her way to the other side of that and is still viable and is still going, all of those things are exciting to me to explore and to bring to the screen," Ejogo, 45, told Travers "Because that's so much the journey of so many women."

Carmen Ejogo appears on "Popcorn with Peter Travers" at ABC News studios, May 15, 2019, in New York City.
James Okungu/ABC News

Watch the full interview with Peter Travers and Carmen Ejogo in the video above.

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