Meet St. Anna’s: Laz Alonso “Hector Negron”

Laz: How you doing?

Ngosi: I’m doing good, and you?

Laz: Doing well, thank you.

Ngosi: I watched Miracle at St. Anna and I really enjoyed it. Your acting was phenomenal, honestly!

Laz: Thank you so much. I did a film a little while ago called Stomp the Yard, and you expect someone of your age to appreciate Stomp The Yard,
but to hear that you responded to this as well, really makes me feel good.

Ngosi: I read that you actually went to school for marketing?

Laz: Yep!
Ngosi: What made you change from business to acting?
Laz: You know what the funny thing is, Ngosi? As an actor, you are constantly marketing yourself, so it really is business. People kind of think of entertainment as purely art, but if you think about it, they call it the “entertainment business” for a reason. In business, they teach you how to market, let’s say brands, like Coca-Cola or Pepsi, and you learn that the product has a life cycle. When people look at the product, it has to look a certain way and taste a certain way for people to like it. In a store, it has to be displayed a certain way, so that people will see it and want to get that, as
opposed to everything else in the store. Well, the same thing goes with acting. Your work speaks for itself. Your work is what other directors and other filmmakers are going to define your brand by. When you see somebody play a bad guy, one too many times, they call it type cast, that’s because that person’s brand has know become bad guys. Same thing with somebody who plays good guys, or somebody who plays a person who cries a lot in every movie, you start associating that person with a brand. Acting is no different! You, as an actor, want to play very different roles so that you constantly keep them guessing, but overall the quality of work that you do is what becomes your brand. Acting, is in fact marketing. For every roll that you are up for, you are selling yourself, letting them know that you are the best person for that job. I feel like marketing really helped my acting out, to be honest with you.
Ngosi: How was it working with Spike?
Laz: Working with Spike, first and foremost, was like a dream come true. My whole life I’ve always wanted to work with Spike, and he was one of the people that I mentioned in my prayers. When I asked God to have the opportunity to work with certain filmmakers, Spike was one of them. Till this day, even now, I still thank good for having this opportunity, and more than anything, to have an opportunity to work with him on a film of this historical relevance and magnitude. Spike received a Behind the Lense Award that Chrysler gave him a few months ago and pretty much all of the actors that he had worked with in his entire twenty year history were there to honor him; including the cast from Miracle at St. Anna. It was so amazing to be in the company of all these great, brilliant actors like Samuel Jackson, Halle Berry, and Denzel Washington, all of these people that Spike brought to light, and in some cases, broke their careers…meaning breaking in, in a good way. When Spike got up there to receive
this award, at first he apologized to all of the other actors who he has worked with throughout his entire career and he said this, by far, is his favorite film that he has ever had the opportunity to direct. That meant so much to me and to the cast; to say that something I was a part of is this man’s favorite piece of work. That hands down sealed the deal, and I’m just really, really thankful that I had the opportunity to work with somebody who I consider an icon and one of my idols in this business.

Ngosi: Absolutely! I can only imagine what that feels like. How did you relate to Hector as a person?

Laz: Relating to Hector as a person depressed me, tremendously. Here’s a man that had to live the rest of his life, forty years after the war, with the guilt of having lost his friends in combat. Everyday that he gets to wake up and see the Sun is a day that he is reminded that his best friends didn’t. That’s really a guilty feeling. You see older people and you see the elderly walking the streets and they greet you with a smile. The last thing you think of is how much pain they might carry inside, because a lot of them have out lived a lot of their friends and relatives, just as Hector has. That’s a very lonely feeling and having to put myself there and to really capture the essence of Hector as an older man… I had to focus on everything that I’ve lost in life. In life, you always want to focus on the good things and the things that you’ve gained, but to really capture Hector, I had to put the majority of my energy and mind in what I’ve lost, the friends you’ve lost and the family you’ve lost, and that’s a depressing place to be for months at a time. You’re basically focusing on something that most people try to forget, and you’re willingly going there. My intentions were that when you see Hector on screen, I’m not acting like I lost something or like I’m sad. I really was. I was really depressed and you feel it genuinely in his eyes when you see him. That was the hardest part about being Hector, being in a constant state of “mental depression.”
Ngosi: I’m in high school and as a young person, throughout my years in school I have not ever learned about the Buffalo Soldiers, I mean I knew
there were Black soldiers, but I didn’t learn anything about them, and people my age haven’t learned anything about them. Do you have any
messages for the youth about learning their history?

Laz: You know what… I think that the youth are doing a good job about learning about their history. I am much older than you, however, my entire life I never learned about the Buffalo Soldiers in regular history class, in Black history class, during Black History Month. You learned a lot about slavery, you learned a lot about the Civil Rights Movement, but you don’t learn about how African Americans, not only effected African American history, but they affected American history, as well as world history, because these Buffalo Soldiers helped win World War II. Without them, World War II would not have been won! It’s the type of thing where I think
this film is going to open up doors for  schools, at least I hope it does. That people learn about a time when Black people took pride in bearing arms to defend this country…a country that at the time, wasn’t really doing too much to defend them.
Ngosi: Thank you so much for your time.
Laz: Cool…thank you.