Vibe.com, January 28th, 2005
Somehow, a connection sparks. Before you know it, you're girlfriends. That is, as much as you can be in a few hours with one of Hollywood's most promising actresses on her week off from shooting a movie with Denzel Washington.
As you head together to Agua, the hipper-than-thou spa on the roof of the Delano Hotel, you realize something else: That in just a few moments, she has made you part of her craft, absorbing the details and quirks that make her characters so memorable. "I love to watch people and take away bits and pieces," says Lathan, 30. "I simply love people."
Later on the phone, Gina Prince-Bythewood, who directed Lathan in Love and Basketball, testifies that Lathan's humanity isn't just for show. "I've seen her fans follow her around in a store, too shy to say anything, and she turned around and introduced herself," Prince-Bythewood says.
Lathan continues to chat breathlessly as she breezes into the spa, pushing her highlighted, shoulder-length hair behind her ears, though it never really obeys. Wearing a rainbow tie-dyed tank, beige drawstring pants, and flip-flops, she's a welcome burst of color and energy in this all-white, all-quiet room. And she's pretty,Äîback-in-the-day pretty, without all the M.A.C and the bling-bling.
For a young artist of color who holds out for three-dimensional leading roles, she sure is busy. There's her character in Fox Searchlight's new movie Brown Sugar, which comes out this fall. Then there's Out of Time, the noir drama she's shooting with Washington. And just when you're thinking she's the heiress apparent to stars like Angela Bassett and Halle Berry, Lathan talks about bringing it all back to her theater roots. In summer 2001, she starred with Billy Crudup in Shakespeare's Measure for Measure in New York's Central Park. "Sanaa is such a special actress because of her subtlety, her ability to convey emotion without ever being big about it," says Prince-Bythewood. "There's a vulnerability there that is undeniable."
The parts which Lathan finds most compelling-educated, professionally driven, emotionally aware women-also reflect who she is as a person. Lathan is beautiful, but not bootylicious. Sexy, but not sluttish. She's believable as the portrait of black middle-class prosperity-such as you'd find in her movies The Best Man, Love and Basketball, and Brown Sugar-probably because she has lived much of this in real life.
Lathan grew up bicoastal, after her parents divorced when she was 5. Her father, Stan Lathan, is a prolific film and TV producer and director whose credits run from Sesame Street and Sanford and Son to Martin and Moesha. Her mother, Eleanor McCoy, is an actress and dancer who was a cast member in the original 1975 Broadway production of The Wiz.
Even in the after-school acting program at age 3, all pigtails and giggles, Lathan was quite the ham. But when, as an undergrad at Berkeley, she began appearing in campus productions, Daddy did not approve. "I knew how limited the opportunities were for African-Americans," he says. "But after I saw her perform, I knew this was right for her." So did the admissions committee at Yale School of Drama, where she immersed herself in classic plays and earned an MFA degree in 1995. James Bundy, now dean of the school, remembers directing her as Irina in Chekhov's Three Sisters. "She was heartbreaking to look at and brought tremendous depth to the character," he says.
Fresh out of school, she paid her dues in off-Broadway productions and commercials, and became a regular on the short-lived sitcom Lateline. Next came a string of movies-starting with an unexpected turn as Wesley Snipes's vampire mother in the gothic thriller Blade. But as Waiting to Exhale ushered in a wave of black romantic comedies and melodramas-a profound change from the inner-city thugfests of the early 1990s-Lathan found herself buoyed on the swell. She played sweet Alicia, the prettiest girl in all of Inglewood, in the 1999 coming-of-age film The Wood. And in 1999's The Best Man, Lathan portrayed Robin, a strong woman who looked past her own hurt and forgave her boyfriend, played by Taye Diggs. From there, she continued to grow in breadth and complexity, appearing in the multicultural comedy Catfish in Black Bean Sauce and in the HBO movie Disappearing Acts opposite Wesley Snipes.
Right this minute, Lathan is dealing with a more pressing issue than her career: fire red or wine (as in merlot) for the toenail polish? She leans forward, holding the bottles near her feet, pondering each one. "What do you think?" she asks. What you think is that either color looks good (she picks the red), and that this seems like the perfect time to cash in on your newfound girlfriend status and pop a pointed question: What about Omar Epps, her longtime boyfriend, whom she met on the set of The Wood and costarred with in Love and Basketball, who happens to be visiting her this week?
She insists there is nothing to share about her relationship. That's the I've-seen-how-the-media-gets-it-twisted line. It's understandable, even respectable, but her smile, the glint in her eyes, the bashful way she turns her head-it all gives her away. "I want to get married and have a family," she finally allows, without specifying Epps. "Two or three kids."
But first she wants to enjoy her Hollywood prime. In the Rick Famuyiwa,Äìdirected Brown Sugar, Lathan's character, a hip hop journalist, reconnects with a childhood friend, played by Diggs. In the '80s, they had discovered rap together, as innocent and full of promise as they were. But as adults, they wrestle with unresolved feelings for each other,Äîjust as they grapple with the corruption and commercialization of the music they grew up loving. "It's the first script I've read in a while that moved me," Lathan says. "The story is sweet, fun, and light."
And personal. Although she attended high school in Beverly Hills and grew up amid Hollywood royalty, she considers herself a child of urban music. "Hip hop is so much a part of who I am," she says. "It's like my family."
In June, she came to South Florida to begin shooting MGM's Out of Time, the story of a small-town police officer, played by Washington, who gets caught in a web of deceit and betrayal. Lathan lights up at just the mention of the movie. "It's so incredibly exciting to be working with Denzel. I play a female temptress, and we are in Banyan Key, a small fishing town," she says. "My role was not written for a black woman. But once Denzel signed on, it opened up the possibilities. He's so passionate about his work. He spends time talking about the script, the roles, and how they should be played. He's the ultimate artist."
The pedicure wraps up with you and your new girlfriend Sanaa laughing so loud at a fantastical headline in one of those outrageous rags ("Nine Tips for a Full Body Orgasm"), that the spa chick asks you both to quiet down. Instead, you head down the block to the newly refurbished Sagamore hotel, where Lathan is staying. Parking in a club chair in the cool of the lobby, bathed in sunlight, she recalls the night Halle Berry won an Oscar. "I've found myself thinking about it so much," Lathan says of Berry's historic moment, which brought her to tears. "Thinking about her win and how it really was bigger than her and spoke to our progress."
As she walks to the elevator, there's so much more she wants to say. She can't wait to read more scripts, to play even more diverse roles, and to get a shot at working behind the scenes. She says this all in one giant sentence, without commas, a period, or even a breath. And then she returns to where she began: asking questions about you, your plans for later tonight, for later in your life.
But you still have one question for Lathan-what does she want her legacy to be? It hangs in the air as she holds the elevator doors open. "I don't want to make choices that are a concession," she says. "At the end of the day, I want to look back and know that my body of work has been meaningful, both as an individual and as an African-American woman."
And then, almost on cue, the doors close and the last thing you see is Lathan's famous yet intimate smile. In more ways than one, she's on her way up.
