Sanaa Lathan Says ‘Shots Fired’ Shoot Was A Challenge
Style Magazine Newswire | 3/24/2017, 3 p.m.
Sanaa Lathan
Fox’s controversial new drama Shots Fired debuted Wednesday night to critical acclaim. The Gina and Reggie Rock Bythewood created series takes on police shootings with some interesting twists.
Sanaa Lathan talked about how heart-wrenching shooting the series was for the cast at The Paley Center for Media in New York.
“It was a grueling shoot,” she said “We were all kind of just destroyed from just the bombardment and just the shock and the awe of ‘I can’t believe this is still happening over and over again. We had a prayer circle and we had a moment of silence. It really dropped in on us how important it was that we asked for grace in this work for all these souls that were gone.
“In a weird way as an actor you have to do a lot of imagination work to get into character and in a weird way, unfortunately, the work was done for us because it was right there. It was chilling at times and it wasn’t like we were pulling. They had started developing it five years before so it was a lot of weird synchronicity with the timing of it all.”
The first riveting segment of the explosive 10-part event series on Fox TV shown at The Paley Center was attended by its creators/executive producers, along with cast members Lathan, Stephan James, Mack Wilds, Richard Dreyfuss and Jill Hennessy.
The emotional episode left everyone in the room yearning for more. Also attending the special screening was NY City Councilman Jumaane Williams and Nicole Paultre Bell (fiancee of Sean Bell).
The series came about after Bythewood tried to explain to his son why unarmed young Black men were still targeted in the 21st century with laws on the books supposedly to protect them.
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