Sanaa Lathan Says Filming “Love & Basketball” ‘Wasn’t Fun, It Was Hard’

Tereza Shkurtaj, Yamillah HurtadoSun, February 22, 2026 at 9:00 PM UTC

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Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in 'Love & Basketball.'

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On Feb. 12, 2026, Sanaa Lathan attended a panel pegged to the 25th Anniversary of Love & Basketball

Director Gina Prince-Bythewood was also in attendance to discuss the film’s enduring legacy

During the event, Lathan revealed that playing her athletic character, Monica Wright, was much harder than it seemed

When Sanaa Lathan first encountered the script for Love & Basketball, she immediately felt a connection to Monica Wright – the fiercely driven young athlete at the center of Gina Prince-Bythewood’s movie.

In the 2000 film, she stars opposite Omar Epps, who plays her childhood neighbor and eventual love interest, Quincy McCall. Lathan’s role blended romance, ambition and vulnerability in a way Lathan rarely saw on screen, and with her theater background, she immediately recognized and appreciated Monica’s depth.

“I read the script and I was like – I gotta play this role. It was a page turner. I cried every time I read it,” the 54-year-old actress told moderator Laura Coates during a panel on Feb. 12. “I had come from theater, with some of the best writers to ever live. And this was on par…in terms of the character development. I knew she had spent a lot of time working on it.”

Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps in 'Love & Basketball.'

Moviestore/Shutterstock

While landing the role was a dream, the reality of playing Monica proved far more demanding than she anticipated. Once cast, Lathan quickly realized that embodying a competitive basketball star required more than emotional range.

“The basketball part, you know, I was coming from drama school, so…the acting part was in the bag,” Lathan explained. “But the basketball part was extremely challenging for me."

"I had to audition with a basketball before [Prince-Bythewood]. She was like, ‘She's gonna ruin my movie,'" Lathan recalled with a laugh.

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The actress, however, was determined to look like a legitimate athlete on screen, and so she trained relentlessly to make it appear as if she had been playing for years.

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Sanaa Lathan in 'Love & Basketball.'

Moviestore/Shutterstock

Lathan emphasized that there is "nothing worse than some bad basketball on film," as viewers can easily tell when actors have never played the sport. Still, shooting some of the training scenes proved to be extremely difficult, especially the silhouetted sequences.

"My goal was to look like I could play basketball, you know, like with the form," she said, specifically pointing to "the two-ball scene [that was shot] in silhouette."

“I was so mad at [Prince-Bythewood] for putting it in silhouette because it really was me,” she stressed. “I had practiced for hours and hours and hours. So the experience of shooting it wasn't fun, it was hard.”

Though the process of learning a sport tested her physically and mentally, the finished film — which also featured Regina Hall, Gabrielle Union and Tyra Banks, to name a few — resonated deeply with audiences and has since become a cultural touchstone.

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”