Accordingly, she called out Celtics for their apparent callousness. More than the infidelity itself, Long said that the worst part of the ordeal was that a highly personal matter was turned into tabloid fodder, something which was deeply traumatic for both herself and her young son. 'I've had friends who were killed in drug-related incidents and drive-bys, and if my mother hadn't been behind me, I'd probably still be living there.' 'I grew up seven blocks away from where we filmed 'Boyz N the Hood,' so that was my reality,' she told the Los Angeles Times in 1993. As such, she could identify with Tre, whose father (played by Laurence Fishburne) does all he can to steer his son away from a life of crime.
Having witnessed poverty and violence firsthand when growing up in South Central, the film resonated with Long on a profound level. And my agent was like, 'No, you have to go.'' At her audition, she was pleased to discover that Singleton was in fact Black, so she gleefully took on the role. 'I didn't wanna go because I honestly thought, 'Who is the white guy writing a movie called 'Boyz n the Hood'?' That's what I thought. 'I was like, 'I can't,'' she told Yahoo! Entertainment.
Initially, she was hesitant to star in the 1991 film because she assumed writer-director John Singleton was a white man co-opting Black culture.
