NEW YORK, NY.- A few minutes into a conversation with Aja Naomi King, a first time Emmy nominee for her graceful, purposeful supporting turn in the Apple TV+ limited series “Lessons in Chemistry,” the earth began to move. “Oh my God. Earthquake! Earthquake!” King said. Once the ground quieted, she collected herself.

“Sorry,” she said. “I just really got the fullness of that shake.”

An Emmy nomination? That has been earthshaking, too. King’s Instagram post about the news is an outpouring of exuberant run-on sentences punctuated by a heart emoji. “If you made it to the bottom of this post you deserve an award,” she wrote.

King, 39, graduated from the School of Drama at Yale in 2010. She had been working professionally for more than a decade, most notably in the tangy ABC procedural “How to Get Away With Murder,” when she was cast in “Lessons in Chemistry.” Based on the bestseller by Bonnie Garmus, the show tells the story of Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson), a onetime chemist who becomes the host of a 1960s cooking show.

King plays Elizabeth’s close friend Harriet. Described in the novel as a middle-aged white woman, Harriet was re-imagined as a young Black mother and an aspiring lawyer who fights to save Los Angeles’ Sugar Hill neighborhood from the incursions of the freeway system.

When Elizabeth, concerned for her career, declines to participate in the fight, King’s Harriet confronts her. “You’re always talking about the things that keep women down, but who does that include?” Harriet says.

While King was initially concerned that Harriet would be a mere foil for Elizabeth, she was gratified by what she described as “the fullness of Harriet’s Black womanhood” that the show allowed for.

“It’s not just the way she fights, but the way she celebrates, the way she experiences joy,” King said. “Because it can’t be only struggle, struggle, struggle. It has to be human and real.” Her Harriet — principled, dynamic, angry, polite — absolutely is.

During a video call, without further aftershocks, King discussed protest, progress and how to have hard conversations. These are edited excerpts.

Q: I’m guessing from your Instagram post that the nomination came as a surprise. Was it?

A: There are the things that you hope and pray for. But you never think they’re actually going to happen. And as you can tell from my post, I did not have the clarity of mind to even begin to accurately convey my emotions around it. You have to love this art so much. You have to be so committed and dedicated to it. If you can’t do that, it’s going to be so hard to keep going because 99% of it is heartbreak. To have this recognition feels really damn good.

Q: In the novel “Lessons in Chemistry,” Harriet is a middle-aged white lady. Why were you considered for the role?

A: I was brought in to play someone else, a character that never existed in the book. As they started building the world of the show, they realized they didn’t need this character and that they were doing a disservice to the people that love this book by not having the character of Harriet in there.

I did have a little trepidation. Because in the book, Harriet basically drops everything she’s doing and starts raising Elizabeth’s child. So I had questions. It would be very concerning for a young Black woman to devote herself to raising a white woman’s child. They were like: “No, no, no, no, no. We’re not going to do that. We want to make you an aspiring lawyer who is trying to save the neighborhood and give you a very loving family.” I was afraid that they would just say those things. But no, they dove into what life is like for Harriet. It just felt so balanced and nuanced and wonderful.

Q: There are moments in the series when Harriet has to nudge Elizabeth toward a greater understanding of civil rights. Is it ever exhausting educating white women?

A: It should be OK to ask questions. But there needs to be an intimacy there first. I had plenty of friends growing up that would ask me questions, wanting to understand my perspective. But we built a relationship first, so that was never exhausting.

That’s what I really loved about the scene when Elizabeth is trying to explain to Harriet why she can’t show up at this protest. The way she does it betrays a sense that she doesn’t fully understand what Harriet has been asking her to do. And that is painful for Harriet because part of true friendship is being understood. But there’s such a gentleness in that scene because it is painful to have to be radically honest. These women are like sisters in my mind because to be able to have the hard conversations, that to me is real love.

Q: Harriet spearheads the campaign to save the Sugar Hill neighborhood. What is your relationship to activism?

A: I’ve been to many (Black Lives Matter) marches. It’s devastating. You want to be there and you want to show up. And simultaneously, it hurts so much because you shouldn’t have to be protesting against things that should be a given. It’s exhausting and it’s hard and it’s uncomfortable. Yet there is such a beautiful sense of togetherness. You’re not alone. That really permeates your spirit in a deep way.

Q: The show is, among many other things, about a woman changing the way that television is made. How would you like to see television change?

A: For the most part, I’m actually really proud of television. That’s where you see the most diversity. But I do always want more people of color in leading roles. I do think that TV has been progressing forward. I just want it to keep going.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.