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

‘The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat’ stars Sanaa Lathan, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and Uzo Aduba

“Each character leaves me with something,” says Sanaa Lathan of her movie and TV projects. Often, between what’s on the screen and in her personal life, “there's a synergy there.”

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. Starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Uzo Aduba and 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.

Barbara Jean, Lathan’s Supremes character (also played by Tati Gabrielle in flashbacks) is “a woman in pain that's self-medicating” with alcohol, the Love & Basketball star says. Her casting “felt cathartic,” she explains: “There was a period in my life where I was using alcohol as a self-medication.”

Lathan, who previously revealed to PEOPLE she 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.’”

Related: Sanaa Lathan Says Her Directorial Debut, 'On the Come Up', Is 'a Tribute to Black Women and Family'

Since going alcohol-free, Lathan’s career has included producing and starring in Nappily Ever After, earning her first-ever Emmy nomination for a guest role on Succession and directing and leading 2022 hit On 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 did Finding 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].”

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Preparing to portray the alcoholic Barbara Jean in Supremes, 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.’

“We've all been through stuff as human beings. You don't escape it because just by nature of being human, you're going to go through pain. And so I use a lot of my own things that I've healed from. That's the fun of acting, that you can turn what was dark into something that is artistic.”

Related: Uzo Aduba To Publish Memoir That Details ‘Final Account’ of Mother’s Life: 'My Greatest Growth' (Exclusive)

Of course, her Supremes costars, 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-Eat is in theaters and streaming on Hulu now.

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