According to PEOPLE, Sanaa Lathan opened up about her classic role in Love & Basketball and revealed how grateful she was for its cultural impact.

Lathan said, “I just remember, after there was a five-minute standing ovation, I was just floored… and then the rest is history. It became this thing where people watched it over and over and over again, and it crossed all racial and cultural lines.”

She continued, “What a gift it was that I was able to, at a young age, play this amazing, fierce character in this beloved movie. When we were making it, for me, I was nervous about the basketball because I really wasn’t a basketball player. I looked like a basketball player because I had a dance background, so I was able to really mimic.”

She added, “When we shot that last shot where Monica is in an actual game at the end of the movie where Quincy and her daughter are sitting courtside, that was an actual L.A. Sparks game. We had one take. I was so nervous because they allowed us to get the real stadium and the real players. One take, because it was in the middle of an actual game.”

Lathan also mentions her journey of how her being sober for six years helped her play the part of an alcoholic in her new role in The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat. She said, “Each character leaves me with something.” She continued, “There was a period in my life where I was using alcohol as a self-medication.”

She added, “You don’t realize how over time it gets your brain out of balance as well, and the more I educated myself on really what it does to you…I have a mother who has never drank, and she’s probably the funniest person, the happiest person, because there’s this whole belief that you can only have fun with alcohol.”

Lathan continued, “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.”