Sanaa Lathan’s Monica Wright in Love & Basketball pursued a future that demanded more than a happy romantic ending.
What happened to Sanaa Lathan? She kept acting, earned an Emmy nomination for Succession and made her feature-directing debut with On the Come Up. Her more recent work includes The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, with additional films announced in 2026.
The path from Monica to those projects includes returning to a beloved ensemble, directing a young performer’s breakthrough and taking supporting roles in new stories. It has been an expansion of her work.
Love & Basketball gave her a lasting signature role
Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2000 film paired Lathan with Omar Epps as Monica and Quincy, neighbors whose relationship develops alongside their ambitions as basketball players.
The Criterion Collection’s edition preserves the film alongside interviews and production material. Its description emphasizes how the romance intersects with the unequal treatment faced by female athletes.
That combination is central to Monica’s appeal. She has something she wants to achieve beyond the relationship, and the story makes room for the difficulty of pursuing both.
For Lathan, the role remains an easy point of recognition more than two decades later. But an enduring character can also make later work less visible to viewers who keep returning to the same film.
Her subsequent career has moved through different kinds of characters and, eventually, a different responsibility on set.
Original photograph, shared under CC BY-SA 3.0.
The Best Man became a story told across decades
Lathan played Robyn in The Best Man, the 1999 ensemble film created by Malcolm D. Lee. The characters returned in The Best Man Holiday in 2013 and again in the eight-episode series The Best Man: The Final Chapters in 2022.
The Television Academy’s retrospective describes how the franchise grew from a film about friendship and relationships into a longer account of the characters’ adult lives.
Moving the final installment to Peacock gave the ensemble more time than a single movie to explore those changes. For viewers, the reunion also carried the history of having watched the cast grow older.
Robyn is one part of that shared story. Lathan’s return illustrates a career in which a familiar role can continue alongside entirely new work, rather than requiring a choice between the two.
Succession brought an Emmy nomination
In Succession, Lathan played attorney Lisa Arthur. The role brought her a 2022 nomination for outstanding guest actress in a drama series, recorded in the Television Academy’s official results.
It was recognition for a guest performance in an ensemble drama, a different kind of opportunity from leading a romantic film.
That distinction is useful when following an actor’s later career. Screen time, billing and recognition do not always move together; a smaller role can introduce a performer to an audience that has not seen their earlier films.
For Lathan, the nomination arrived in the same year as a substantial step behind the camera. Her work was expanding in more than one direction at once.
On the Come Up made her a feature director
Lathan directed On the Come Up, the 2022 adaptation of Angie Thomas’s novel. Jamila C. Gray stars as Bri, a teenage rapper trying to find her voice while facing family and financial pressures.
Producer Temple Hill’s film page records its Toronto International Film Festival selection and September 2022 release. The story follows the conflict between Bri’s own identity and the image others want her to sell.
In an interview with Original-Cin, Lathan explained that directing a short film during lockdown helped lead to the opportunity. Her representatives saw that work and began submitting it.
“I kind of knew that I was going to direct,” she said, although she had expected it to happen later.
Lathan also described reviewing roughly 200 audition tapes before finding Gray. That is a different kind of creative task from preparing her own performance: recognizing the actor who could carry the film.
Her move into directing connects with Regina King’s broader work as an actor and filmmaker, another example of an established performer taking responsibility for an entire production.
Original photograph, shared under CC BY-SA 3.0.
The Supremes focused on friendship over a lifetime
In the 2024 film The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, Lathan played Barbara Jean alongside Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Odette and Uzo Aduba as Clarice.
Searchlight’s official synopsis describes three lifelong friends whose bond has endured decades of difficult experiences. Tina Mabry directed the film.
The story places friendship at its center. It gives Lathan another ensemble relationship to explore, with the women’s shared history carrying as much importance as any one moment.
That makes the film a useful later-career companion to Love & Basketball. The earlier film follows a young woman pursuing her future; The Supremes considers what people carry with them after years of living.
Her confirmed new work includes Tilt
In June 2026, Getaway Entertainment confirmed Lathan’s casting in Tilt, a thriller directed by Sophia Banks.
The announcement said the film was in production in Los Angeles. Lathan plays Maeve Paxton, the mother of Briana Middleton’s reporter character, in a story unfolding during a wildfire.
That is a production update, rather than a confirmed release date. As of November 2026, it provides evidence of another acting commitment without requiring assumptions about when audiences will see the finished film.
Lathan’s career now includes a signature romance, a long-running ensemble, recognized television work and a completed feature as director. Monica remains memorable, but the work that followed her has continued to grow.