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• Longer bio on Ms. Lathan
• Interview with Ms. Lathan
• A Raisin in the Sun official site

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Tavis: It's been a real busy summer for actress Sanaa Lathan. Back in May, she received a Tony nomination--I ain't mad at you, Sanaa--for her role in the hit Broadway revival of 'A Raisin in the Sun.' Now you can see her in theaters nationwide in the summer blockbuster 'Alien vs. Predator.' Talk about a wide range of roles.

Sanaa Lathan: Yeah, I know.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! Here's a scene from 'Alien vs. Predator.'

Tavis: Hmm, that girl got range. That girl got range. Hey, Sanaa. How are you?

Sanaa: I'm great. Happy to be here.

Tavis: Glad to have you here. Let me just tell you up front I love you for 3 reasons.

Sanaa: OK.

Tavis: First reason is because I thought it took a great deal of courage for you to accept an opportunity--it was a great opportunity, now, so it isn't like you made a bad choice here--but I thought it was courageous on a certain level for you to decide that you would tackle the opportunity to go to Broadway, because the critics in New York can be brutal, as you well know. You rolled the dice, you rehearsed and did your thing, and out of it comes a Tony nomination. So you have to feel good about that experience.

Sanaa: Can you imagine? You know, I was shooting 'Alien' in Prague. It was a 4-month shoot. It was cold. It was grueling. It was the most intense experience of my life, and I said to my agent, I said, 'I want to do a play. I just want to do something that's simple. Every night, you do the whole arc of the character. You have the audience right there.' And literally, about 3 weeks later, the opportunity came up for 'A Raisin in the Sun.' And so I was just like, 'Wow, this is amazing. This is amazing synchronicity. I'm gonna do this.'

And when I got into it, I realized--I mean, I realized that this was really just kind of a dream come true for me, you know, to be on Broadway and to be working with people like Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald and to have packed houses every night. I mean, it was just--

Tavis: And some guy named P. Diddy--Puffy--

Sanaa: And P. Diddy--yeah, and that's the reason why there was packed houses every night. It was just--and then the Tony nomination, which was not at all on my radar, at all. I mean, I was just happy to be there. You know, I fell in love with the character, and it was great to get a new generation into the theater to experience this classic play.

Tavis: When you say you want to do something simple, I'm struck by your use of the word 'simple.' Here you are doing movies. What do you mean? You have to explain that one for me.

Sanaa: Because it's--

Tavis: Broadway ain't simple. You're out there every night. You'd better hit your marks. You can't forget your lines. There ain't no take 2, take 3, take 4.

Sanaa: That was--yeah, they were both each on the opposite ends of the spectrum, each so hard. I mean, one of the hardest experiences I've ever had. But in terms of 'Alien vs. Predator,' it was very technical, and I had never experienced something like that. It was 4 months, everything's out of order. You know, you do take--you know, something that's 2 seconds on the screen, you may be doing for 3 days, and you do take after take, and you do different angles, and you're dirty, and you have slime dripping on you. You know, I mean, it's just--

Tavis: Ha ha ha! Poor Sanaa.

Sanaa: I know, poor me. So, I just wanted--simple in the fact of just simple in terms of living the life of the character every night, living the through line of the character every night.

Tavis: Second thing I love about you. With all the talent you have to act--and I'm not trying to cast aspersion on anybody in this business who has not gone to school, ‘cause I know a lot of folk who are awfully good at what they do, a lot of rappers who these days ain't been nowhere in the classroom, forget the playground, ain't been in the classroom. But you have an undergraduate degree from Berkeley and a Masters from Yale. That's serious. So you didn't just want to do the acting thing. You wanted to really know your craft. Doesn't come much better than an M.F.A. from Yale.

Sanaa: Well, I grew up in the business, and so I have a lot of respect for, you know, the entertainment industry. I think that, you know, if you treat it right, there can be a lot of honor in it. And so I was always a brainy kid, and I kind of never admitted to myself that I wanted to be an actress. I was always doing, you know, creative things, but I said to myself I want to be a lawyer because it sounded good, not because I had any interest in the law. So--but when it came time--

Tavis: Although given what you do now, a good lawyer always comes in handy.

Sanaa: Right, that's true. But when it came time to really make the decision what am I gonna do with my life, I said, you know, this is what I love to do the most, this is what I'm passionate about, but let me try and be the best that I can be. And for me, that meant really, you know, studying and trying to go to school, you know, and learn about the craft.

Tavis: Tell me how in a very--give me if you can a simple or practical, certainly a practical answer to how your education, the money your mom and them spent, your daddy done spent--how your daddy doing, by the way?

Sanaa: He's good. He's busy.

Tavis: Tell your daddy I said hi. The money your parents spent to send you to Berkeley and to send you to Yale, tell me how their money is well spent in terms of what you do every day? Is there anything that--

Sanaa: Well, I think that, you know, the biggest thing I can say is nobody's gonna hire you for a movie because you went to the Yale School of Drama. Nobody cares about that. I think for me, it's really about the confidence that it gives you.

You know, knowing when you go into a situation that you have had a certain amount of experience and you've--it's just confidence and self-esteem in this business is everything, because everything, I think, strips away at it in terms of the way that the business runs, and, you know, the fact that you never know what your next job is, and, you know, there's so much competition, and there's so--it's never about, you know, going in and doing a great job. There's always so many factors. And so I think, you know, whatever you can have, you know, to fall back on--

Tavis: So it's confidence.

Sanaa: It's confidence.

Tavis: You know you ain't stupid.

Sanaa: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Tavis: The third thing I love about you is the name. Sanaa, which means?

Sanaa: 'Work of art' in Swahili. It means a lot of things. It's also the capital of Yemen, and it's also an Arabic word. I was told by someone that said that doing Sanaa is the act of praying to God in their language, so I thought that that was nice.

Tavis: What do you pray to God about?

Sanaa: I, you know, for me, it's a daily appreciation, giving thanks for all the blessings in my life and for all the blessings, all my loved ones.

Tavis: With the variety of roles--I started out our conversation by talking about the range that you have been offered, are you satisfied with that range? Or even with the opportunities that you have, do you still find yourself saying from time to time, 'Ain't enough good scripts in this town.'

Sanaa: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I feel like I'm too picky for my own good. Yeah, I just--you know, I come from the theater, so it's like I've been used to working on plays like 'A Raisin in the Sun' and Shakespeare and, you know, that's like the epitome. People work for years on a play, and then, you know, you get scripts, and it's like you just--yeah, I want to work on good, quality scripts, so--

Tavis: What, for you, is the impetus, whatever the role might be, what's the impetus for being in this business, for getting up every day? You grew up, as you said earlier, in the entertainment business. You grew up in an entertainment family. There are certain families, certain moms and dads who tell their kids don't do what Mom and Daddy did.

Sanaa: That was my father.

Tavis: So your father said that? Don't do this.

Sanaa: Don't do it, because he's seen how--you know, how hard it is for people. You know, women, men, I mean, it's just hard to be an actor. He's been on the other side making those decisions. He was like, 'Oh, no. I don't want my baby to go through that.'

Tavis: So as usual, you disobeyed what your father told you to do.

Sanaa: That's right. Exactly.

Tavis: You did this anyway, and the reason for doing that every day is what? Why override what your daddy told you to do?

Sanaa: Because I love it. Because the moments where you're onstage and you're in the middle of a moment and there's 1,200 people watching you is the ultimate, ultimate, ultimate high. There's nothing else like it in the world. I mean, it's my passion. I feel so lucky to have found something that I am so passionate about. And any chance for me to do it, I'll do it. And the fact that I can get paid for it, wow, that's amazing.

Tavis: That's a good thing.

Sanaa: Yeah.

Tavis: Nice to get paid to get slimed.

Sanaa: Right. Ha ha ha!

Tavis: Not bad work if you can get it. Tell me--if I'm getting too personal, tell me, and I'll back up--tell me what you think you have to work on?

Sanaa: As an actress?

Tavis: As an actor, to really, really become as good as you, you know, you can?

Sanaa: Wow, I don't know.

Tavis: What part of your repertoire? You've done the stage--

Sanaa: I'm always, you know, I'm always--I took a acting class last year for the first time since drama school.

Tavis: Wait, stop. This always cracks me up. So you've been acting how many years now?

Sanaa: I mean, professionally? Since ‘96.

Tavis: You've been at this a while. I'm always cracking up when actors--I talked to someone the other day who'd been acting for, like, 20 years, and he was telling me he had to get off the phone, he was going to an acting class. I'm like, man, you've been doing this 20 years. What's your acting class for?

Sanaa: Think about, like, you know, a bass player or piano player, they practice every day. And, you know, if you're not working, you gotta just, you know, you gotta practice your craft. This is your instrument, so it's like, you know, I believe in constantly studying. I don't think that you ever reach a point where that's it. And people who--I think you can also practice your craft through your jobs, too, but if you're not working, you know, I think an acting class is great.

Tavis: So I read somewhere that these young boys, young men, are, like, noticing you now as they've never have before because of 'Alien vs. Predator.' A lot of people recognizing you in Starbucks and all kinds of places. So are you content to be known as the girl in 'Alien vs. Predator'?

Sanaa: Yeah.

Tavis: Ha ha ha! Can you live with that?

Sanaa: I can. You know why? ‘Cause if you go see the movie, you'll see that it's a great role. She's a great character.

Tavis: What is funny to me, though, is that the brothers and sisters always get killed off first.

Sanaa: Right. I know.

Tavis: I don't want to give the movie away, but--

Sanaa: Yeah, you gotta go see it. That's not the case in this one, though. I won't tell you what happens, but it's definitely a reverse of that.

Tavis: Sanaa said, 'I ain't going out like that. I'm not going out in the first scene of the movie.' In 30 seconds, do you have any idea of the ultimate role, something that you're clamoring--I'm not talking a person or a character, but something that you really want to do that you hope is in the offing?

Sanaa: I always get asked that, and I always find that I don't even know what the perfect role is, because Beneatha in 'A Raisin in the Sun' was a dream role, and Lex in 'Alien vs. Predator' was a dream role. Monica in 'Love & Basketball' was a dream role. Zora in 'Disappearing Acts' was a dream. I mean, come on. I mean, it's like I could not have dreamed. Yeah, I couldn't have dreamed those women. So, I just think there's, you know--there's opportunities out there that I don't even know about.

Tavis: Well, as you get them, come back and see us again. Nice to see you, Sanaa.

Sanaa: Good to see you.

Tavis: 'Alien vs. Predator' at a theater near you as we speak. That's our show for tonight. As always, you can catch me on the radio on NPR. I'll see you back here next time on PBS. Until then, thanks for watching. Good night from Los Angeles, and as always, keep the faith.