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      *“We’re so used to seeing this issue with a black man and a white woman, and this is really one of the first times you see it on the big screen with a white man and a black woman,” explains Sanaa Lathan, who spoke with us recently about her starring role in the film “Something New.”

       The 34-year-old plays a career woman who finds love outside of the confines of her specific checklist. Kenya McQueen knows what she wants, and it’s not a white man. But when she’s set up on a blind date with a Caucasian gardener, played by Simon Baker, her previous race and class guidelines slowly – very slowly – begin to soften.      

       “Her friends are really not against [the relationship], her family is really not giving her too much, it’s really her own prejudices, her own struggle with it,” Lathan says. “So this film could be a metaphor for doing anything outside of the box you put yourself in.”

       According to Lathan, the screenwriter’s inspiration for the film came from a Newsweek cover story several years ago that stated 42.4 percent of black women aren’t married, “and it’s because we’re climbing up the corporate ladder so much faster, and our male counterparts are either going to jail, dying or dating outside the race,” Lathan explains. “So what do you do if you wanna have a family?”     

       “Something New,” which was previously titled “42.4 Percent,” stars “Hustle & Flow’s” Taraji P. Henson as one of Kenya’s girlfriends. The Washington D.C. native feels more black women than black men tend to date strictly within the race because of reasons that date back to slavery.      

       “Women, we always feel the burden just from our history of trying to hold that family together,” she says. “It’s just carrying over generation after generation. We just carry that load, we’ve always had. You know, we gotta keep the black family together, whereas the man was always taken away from the family, so it’s easier for him to go and look outside.”

       “It’s because we’re so loyal,” laughs Lathan. “I think we all understand where that pressure comes from. There’s a feeling of abandoning your people. I think that at this point, we should just follow our hearts and really try not to worry what other people think, but it’s still there. I identified with Kenya.”

       Lathan, who says she has dated outside of her race before, does not share with Kenya the level of celebrity that often splashes her personal life onto the cover of tabloids.  Explaining a recent Vibe magazine interview, in which she was reported to have blown up at the reporter for asking about her rumored affair with Denzel Washington, she says: “They did a story on me and they asked me the question, because somehow it’s circulating again in a ridiculous out of control way, and so I answered the question.”      

       “I learned early on in the business that when you’re doing anything on any kind of level, people are gonna talk,” she adds. “For nine years, people have been talking about me, since the beginning, as they would anybody in the spotlight. People gossip in high school and in the corporate world. On our level, it’s just put out there.”

      Henson chimed in “They’re starting to put rumors out about me now,” most likely referring to her reported relationship with Common. “I was like, ‘Oh, I must be on another level now! What else yall got to say?’”

"Something New" opens today in theaters.

Read our review HERE.