Sanaa Lathan admits she was "miserable" by shooting "Love And Basketball"

Although most people who watch Love and basketball 19 years after the release of the film, the 47-year-old actress said that filming the project had been a "miserable" experience.

"Gina [Prince-Bythewood] really wanted, and the producers, they really wanted a basketball player capable of acting as an actress to whom they could learn to play basketball, "she told KCAL, the affiliate of CBS for LA. However, it was very difficult to do, so even though they were working hard to find basketball players who could possibly play Monica, they kept Sanaa around because they liked her reading the role. . She was sort of a safety net, and because of that, she had to fight seriously for the role.

"I would always make the final step and they would throw another basketball player," she said. "They gave basketball players interim coaches."

While basketball players were taught to play in the hope of playing this role, Sanaa was left alone to learn basketball for a while. When she was going to attend basketball auditions, she said it would go terribly.

"Finally, I asked," If you want me to continue, you'll have to find me a basketball coach because I hear you're giving these basketball players interim coaches, "and that's what they did."

She ended up training five hours a day for a while before landing the job. When she did, she said she felt a bit undesirable. That's why turning for her was not as nice as some would have thought.

"I was miserable [laughs]. I can laugh now, she says. "I had the job and I think Gina finally managed to hire someone." It was as if she had hired me because she could not find anyone, so there was not much joy and there was not much confidence in me. It was his baby and it was his first staging. It was a big problem for her. Here I am, nobody really knows me and she has to hire me. She gets to the point where she knows it, she makes this decision with me, but yet, I was like default. It's hard. "

"They also surrounded me in all basketball scenes with real ball players," she added. "I was not Sanaa Lathan, I was an actress and I could feel like," Why did that play the role? She can not play! So that was a lot for me. "

However, she overcame everything by completely mastering Monica in the role of actor. She already had more than 30 pieces to her credit, which gave her the confidence she needed to overcome everything.

"If I had been an actress who had not really done a lot of things, just a few drama clbades, I would have probably been terrified. But I knew I could play the role, "she said. "The role for me was easy. I had that. So I was not worried about it. It was basketball. "

For the record, while she was not crazy about Gina at first, she was spinning Love and basketballshe now considers her as a family and is grateful to have been part of her clbadic film.

"We quickly joined later. At the end of the shoot, we were cool and very close, "she said. "We continued to do Missing Acts and Fire and I like it. She is like a sister to me. She is an incredible artist. "