Sanaa Lathan has been taking our collective breath away on Fox’s ripped-from-the-headlines “Shots Fired” as Ashe Akino, lead investigator on two cases in a small Southern town: one involving a black police officer shooting a young white boy and another involving a white officer shooting a young black boy. Lathan sat with Backstage earlier this month to discuss her pulse-pounding series, her creation of Ashe and other characters throughout her career, and the best piece of acting advice she’s ever gotten.
Mixed martial arts training informed her Ashe.
“I did some MMA. It was a great workout, but really, the benefit, which I didn’t know going in, was my teacher was always giving me scenarios of, like, ‘You get back to your house and from behind the door, somebody jumps out!’ He’s like, ‘A fighter is always on the defensive.’ I kind of give people the benefit of the doubt; I’m generally a happy-go-lucky person. And so it helped me get into the mindset of a fighter. Ashe is always on the defensive. She doesn’t trust. She doesn’t give people the benefit of the doubt. So all those things were super helpful.”
‘Film is almost more intimate than real life.’
“There is a true intimacy [when acting] with the camera. And so I would say—and I did this—always film your auditions at home so you can watch yourself and you can see the things that you’re doing that don’t register and the things that work. And you can get used to [the camera], because it is a bit of an adjustment. But it’s always about the truth, whether you’re onstage or on set. With film, you just always have to have the inner life, and the camera will pick that up.”
Actors need a thick skin.
“Being on a set, what you learn real quickly in this business is that it’s not a democracy and there are, sometimes, some real assholes that you have to deal with. My advice to all you young actors out there is that you come and you do your work and you let whatever asshole-ness is going on, which you will definitely encounter working in this business, roll off your back and just try not to take it personally.”
READ: Is Your Skin Thick Enough for This Business?
Alfre Woodard has the secret to longevity.
“I asked [‘Love & Basketball’ co-star Alfre Woodard], ‘What is the secret to longevity?’ And she said, ‘Make every decision as if you had all the time in the world and all the money in the world.’ Now that is very hard to do, because there’s times when you can’t make your rent, there’s times where you’re like, ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to work again.’ But for me, that has worked. That was some of the best advice ever. It’s hard, though. It takes a lot of faith.”
There’s a magic to what actors do.
“Once you start that process of working on a character, then it’s almost like life—the universe, whatever you want to call it—starts giving you inspiration. Whether you meet somebody one night out at a dinner and they tell you a story and it reminds you of a scene you have to do…. It’s like your imagination is all of a sudden this magnet for information. It’s kind of magic. It just starts coming and you start getting this inspiration.”
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