NEW ORLEANS — The Laz Alonso and McDonald‘s “Learn It Live” event, an inside-the-studio type setting also sponsored by American Airlines and BlackAtlas.com, was remarkable for what it accomplished. It humanized the dashing thespian and provided texture and layers to the meteoric star of Jumping the Broom.
Even if for just a few minutes, the image of the Laz Alonso – the Hollywood heartthrob – receded and remnants of him as a human being and multifaceted businessman crystallized before the packed crowd of mostly adoring females at the Republic nightclub. The audience, in town for the annual Essence Music Festival, was enthralled with the recount of Alonso’s poignant journey through Howard University and onto Wall Street and entrepreneurship and then into Tinseltown’s world of make-believe.
As Steed Media Group Publisher Munson Steed navigated Alonso through an informal and intimate discussion setting, the loquacious and eloquent actor broached a variety of interesting topics: learning from the regal and always professional Angela Bassett, who produced Jumping the Broom; how Moscow became his favorite worldwide glam destination; and that he was pleased that, despite the action-drama films that pepper his resume, he was chosen to play his first romantic lead and that it was with actress Paula Patton.
The midday event had the vibe of a prime-time evening gig because of the equal exchange of energy between the audience and Alonso, whose magnetism sent currents racing through the venue. The event also was punctuated by McDonald’s altruism: The company brought Essence Music Festival trip winners from as far away as Detroit, New Jersey and North Carolina, and the winners were each given the enviable task of coming up to sit next to Alonso and asking him a question.
One winner’s question about Alonso’s time in New Orleans had the actor reaching back through his mental database to recall the time 10 years ago when he was in the French Quarter covering the Super Bowl for BET, his first big 
break in entertainment.
Before the audience members all got an opportunity to take photos with Alonso, he shared some of his life and career observations:
On working with Paula Patton:
“When we first go on the set, we had to shoot the end of the movie when we made up. I had met Paula only once, and she had just had her baby two months before. We had no relationship. We didn’t know each other. We had to make stuff up to appear that we had been dating. We said ‘Hold up now, if we don’t establish something now that we can incorporate into the beginning of the movie, people are not going to believe us. They are not going to believe that we are this much in love with each other.'”
On improvisation, or “improv,” as it’s called in the industry:
“There are some actors that get scripts, and that’s the end of their process. They just memorize their lines and deliver them when the cameras come on, and they probably do a good job at it. But then you have special actors where they look at scripts as the beginning. It’s just a skeleton, and it’s their job to put the meat and potatoes on the bone. That’s the research and development that you give the character to make it real.”
On advice Alonzo gives to aspiring actors:
“When people ask me for advice, I tell them ‘Save your money up if you’re going to pursue your dream,’ and that’s not just as an actor; that’s in anything. What holds us back, especially as African Americans and minorities and those of us who step out of the comfort of the 9-to-5, when you take that risk, you must have a significant amount of money saved up. There will be lean days. There will be lean times, and that usually hurts a small, up-and-coming business. And, as an actor, we are a business. We’re no different than McDonald’s. I’m working hard to be a Big Mac. Right now, I’m working hard as a Quarter Pounder. I’m almost a Big Mac; all I need is that special sauce, and I’ll be there.”
On taking responsibility for how he’s portrayed on screen:
“I gladly take that responsibility. You can’t just take a script and say ‘OK, I’ll take that role.’ It’s not that I won’t play a bad guy again; I will. But I can’t be gratuitous. If he is a bad guy, then let’s have enough character development and back-story and a well-rounded story [to make the part work].”
On what he did before he went into acting:
“When I graduated from Howard, I didn’t go straight into acting. I worked on Wall Street for a couple of years, and I started up a marketing company and that enabled me to do the acting thing at night before BET came up to me and said, ‘Hey, we’re going to give you a show.’”
–terry shropshire
