Recently, director Gina Prince-Bythewood sat down with Shadow and Act’s Locked Down With, a question and answer series with prominent Black creatives.

During the question, she spoke about Love and Basketball and how she went back and forth with the studio so the movie would have a PG-13 rather than R rating for that sex scene between Sanaa Lathan and Omar Epps.

Looking back retroactively, Prince-Bythewood recognizes that the PG-13 rating helped younger audiences, the Black girls she made the movie for, see the film.

Prince-Bythewood also spoke about the scene where Alfre Woodard slaps Sanaa and why it ended up being a real slap instead of a staged one.

“We’re doing the scene and Alfre is fake-slapping [Sanaa]…and I was not getting the performance from Sanaa.