Sanaa Lathan Says Playing an Alcoholic in New Movie ‘Felt Cathartic’ After Giving Up Drinking 6 Years Ago (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Sanaa Lathan on May 14.Photo:Taylor Hill/WireImage

Taylor Hill/WireImage

Lathan’s latest,The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, “definitely was in that category,” the actress-filmmaker, 52, tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. StarringAunjanue Ellis-Taylor,Uzo Adubaand Lathan as a trio of friends weathering life’s ups and downs at their local Indiana diner in the 1960s, the Tina Mabry-directed film is adapted from Edward Kelsey Moore’s novel of the same name.

Lathan, who previouslyrevealed to PEOPLEshe had quit drinking in 2018, says there were multiple reasons for both her alcohol intake and decision to stop. “Navigating life as a woman, as a Black woman in Hollywood, is not for the faint of heart,” she says. “And people cope in different ways.”

Her drinking prior to 2018, she continues, “was never an everyday thing, but it was, ‘If I’m going out, I’m drinking more than I should.’”

Since going alcohol-free, Lathan’s career has included producing and starring inNappily Ever After, earning her first-ever Emmy nomination for a guest role onSuccessionand directing and leading 2022 hitOn the Come Up. She says that her success in the last six years is not a coincidence: “I do believe that I would never have been able to direct a major studio movie if I hadn’t stopped. There are things that I’m doing in my life now that I don’t think that I would’ve been able to sustain.”

That’s true for Lathan’s “simple” self-care routine of walks through Los Angeles with her pooch Nala and cherished time with family and friends. As it turns out, she recently found out that alcohol abuse runs in her family.

“I didFinding Your Roots,” she recalls. “And I didn’t know this, but I found out that there are a couple of generations of people who had died from alcoholism in my lineage. And my father broke the cycle for himself, and what a blessing for me to be able to see that. So when it was time, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is possible,’ and I stopped [drinking].”

Vondie Curtis-Hall and Sanaa Lathan in ‘The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat’.Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures

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Preparing to portray the alcoholic Barbara Jean inSupremes, adds Lathan, meant knowing “that I was going to have to access a lot of that. I just told myself, ‘You know what? This is your opportunity to purge a lot of the pain that you’ve been through in your life.’

Of course, herSupremescostars, especially Ellis-Taylor and Aduba, also had a lot to do with why Lathan signed onto the movie. “Part of the reason why I even decided to do this was to work with them and work with those supreme — oh, no pun intended! — supreme kind of thespians,” she quips.

The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eatis in theaters and streaming on Hulu now.

source: people.com