Teyana Taylor has played many roles since she was 15: dancer, choreographer, singer, My Super Sweet 16 star, director, actor, and more recently, mother. But she’s known all along she’s capable of even more. Think of her as a Glade plug-in, she says. “I’ve only been plugged into one wall down in the corner in the bathroom,” she explains, spinning the metaphor. “I could be plugged in the kitchen, the bedroom, the family room, the great room. Like I could even be plugged into the AC filter, you know what I’m saying?”

Anyone who’s seen A.V. Rockwell’s debut feature A Thousand and One is probably also convinced there’s nothing Teyana Taylor can’t do. In the central role of Inez, a woman recently released from prison who kidnaps her six-year-old son from the foster system, Taylor is charismatic and ferocious, introspective and tender, playing a woman clinging to motherhood as an escape from a challenging life she can’t otherwise find a way out of. A Thousand and One is also a chronicle of a changing Harlem, meeting Inez in the early ’90s and following her and her son through the transformations of the Giuliani and Bloomberg eras. 

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For the Harlem-raised Taylor, Inez was a familiar character, including her mistakes. “I don’t think Inez did anything out of the ordinary that any of us haven’t done,” she says. “Getting in our own way, taking everything personal, boom, boom, boom, boom.” She fought hard for the role and built a deep trust with Rockwell, drawing on her own experience as a music video director to build the film alongside her. “I understand what it is to be both in front of the lens and behind the lens,” Taylor says. “I think for [Rockwell] it was also a comfort in knowing, like, I see what you see, boo. I know what a certain shot should look like, I know exactly what to do, exactly how to catch it.”

A Thousand and One premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where it won the grand jury prize; it opens in theaters this week from Focus Features. Taylor, who stars in the Kenya Barris–written White Men Can’t Jump remake later this year and is also prepping her feature directorial debut, says A Thousand and One has already opened new doors—or to use her metaphor, new places to be plugged in. “I feel like this role has already changed my life and it hasn’t even come out yet,” she says. “You know, I got a lot of nos in my life, and this one small yes got me a lot of big yeses on the way.”

Hear more from Taylor on this week’s Little Gold Men podcast above, or you can find the show on Apple Podcasts or anywhere else you get your podcasts.