On June 20th, as a part of Film Life's 17th annual American Black Film Festival (ABFF) in Miami Beach, Comcast NBC Universal presented a panel on the upcoming film, The Best Man Holiday at the Ritz-Carlton . This panel, moderated by Shaun Robinson of Access Hollywoood, featured the film's director, Malcolm Lee, and some of the cast, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, and Sanaa Lathan.

Shaun Robinson introduced the trailer for the sequel to The Best Man, exclusively premiering at ABFF, which received many laughs, cheers, and screams from the audience, before individually introducing the panel member themselves.

Lee and the cast discussed the sequel, their own careers, and working together again.

Here are some highlights from their talk:

Lee, speaking on making the sequel, 14 years later:

"I didn't want to do anything too soon. I wanted to be able to tell good stories. Frankly, with sequels, they're tough because people have such high expectations, and second one comes out and it's kinda like, 'Ehh, it's not as good as the first.' I had the idea to do something and I said Id love to revisit these characters, like, ten years later, once they've lived some life, once I've lived some life, and I had more to say."

Malcolm Lee and the whole cast first meeting to discuss a possible sequel:

Sanaa: "It was a really fun night. [Lee] invited us all to BOA in Beverly Hills, and we were just so excited to see each other because we're all friends, so it was like reunion. The drinks started flowing and the food starting coming, and he started to pitch the movie, and basically, he pitched it, literally, moment by moment, scene by scene. Within five minutes, we were on the edge of our seats, literally like we were watching the movie. By the end of the pitch, we were like, 'Okay, Malcolm, let's do it. Please write this. We will all be on board.' He wanted us to be all on board before he put his time and effort to write the script."

Nia: "And also, we had to convince the studio to make this movie. There was no greenlight before this dinner. He had a very unique way of approaching this, it was completely unorthodox, because it's usually the other way around. It's usually that the director has the greenlight on the script and we're the last to know. It actually came to us and we became a part of championing the process, which was completely different from anything we've ever done."

Morris: "I think once we got together at that dinner, and just all of us being there in the same place at the same time, it was just a good feeling and a good vibe, and that just made us want to do it more. Being in this industry, you have a lot of disappointments. People come to you all the time with a great script, it's a go, then you don't hear from them again. Once we got the call that this was a greenlight, we got really excited."

Malcolm Lee, when asked how tough it was getting the first film, The Best Man, made:

"I would call that movie the right script at the right time. Movies that preceded it like Love Jones, Waiting to Exhale, and Soul Food, these are movies that showed African-Americans in a light that was truer to what I had been seeing in cinema. When Soul Food was on the rise, I said if I can time a script to be ready for when Soul Food was successful, and I write the "next" Soul Food, then I'm ready to make the movie."

Nia, on the success of her career before The Best Man and accepting the role:

"Well, I didn't audition, which means nothing except for in that moment, because we all have to go out and fight for what we want. You can get an offer one day, and do ten auditions the next day, it just depends on the project. But I think it was a time in my career, it was Love Jones, it was Soul Food, and in Soul Food, there was a lot going on, but I read the script (for The Best Man), I loved the script, and I met with Malcolm, I liked Malcolm, we had lunch in some place in New York, and pretty much after that it was a done deal. Jordan was a different character for me to play, because she was sort of buttoned up, uptight, very business, and playing her again and seeing how she's grown was great because this is what all of you women experience. You see yourself at a certain age and then you evolve your careers, you're starting to have children, you're starting to deal with relationships, and we all realize that we're all going through the same stuff. That's what's so great about this film, because with each one of these characters, somebody in this audience can relate to them. That's why they loved it the first time, and hopefully, this time, as we the characters have matured and gotten more successful, or not, and having children, that you'll feel the same way."

Sanaa, on where she was in her career before the first film:

"Well, I was supposed to go in for Candy, the stripper. This was actually a turning point in my career as a woman actress. I said, I don't want to play that role, I want to play Robin, and I didn't know that that was possible, so I asked my agent, I said, "Can you ask them if I can audition for Robin," and he said yes. So, for me, when I actually got the part, I was like, "Wow." I actually had doubts about asking my agent that, because as an actor you feel like you have to just take every chance you can get. For me, that was a turning point in terms of having a voice."
Lee added: "I had a number of actresses in mind to play that part of Robin, before Sanaa came in. I had heard great things about Sanaa, and I said, 'Okay. Let's see what she does.'"
He went on to say that after seeing Sanaa, he knew that anybody else that was going to come in had to reach that level, or the part was hers.

Morris, on first hearing about the role of Lance in The Best Man:
"I don't really remember where I was when I first heard about it, I just wanted to work. I had to audition a lot, because Malcolm wasn't sure, I wasn't nailing the scene, I wasn't big enough at the time [physically, since the character was a football player]."
Lee adds in, "It was one of those things where I was, like, 'I don't know.' I largely have my wife to thank. I showed her the audition tape, and she said, 'Get Morris Chestnut.' I mean, you saw the movie, it was a very volatile character. As you saw in the original, he knocked it out the park. But that's nothing compared to what he does in this movie."

On getting the studio to agree to doing the sequel:

Sanaa: "Even after he wrote such a beautiful script, and we were all excited and saying, "Okay, let's do it," all of a sudden the studio was like, "Oh, we're not sure. We're not sure if this has all the same elements of the first one," and for me, it was phenomenal. So, it was Malcolm's idea to do a table read. We did a table read for the studio. All of us came in, and we literally acted it out like a play. It was no sitting there reading, it was full on. And we killed it."

Malcolm: "I pitched the story, I wrote the story that I pitched, and then they were like, "It's not what the first one was," and I'm like, "I know, I did that on purpose." I don't want to repeat myself, and my actors don't want to repeat themselves. They want to grow, they want it to evolve, they don't want to have to tell the same exact story they did the first time around. Without giving anything away, it's a different story. Very funny still, but it's also a little bit more serious and sophisticated. It got to the point where they went, "Why don't we try this, why don't we try that," and I said, "Listen. I am very committed to this story, my actors are committed to this story, I'm not going to do that. If you want to lose one, you're going to lose them all. Then, I said, "Let's do a reading." And I called everybody up. I said it's do or die right now. This version of the movie is either going to sink or swim with what we do in the room. And literally, finished that reading, and they were just blown away. They said, "You know what, reading it off the page doesn't compare to hearing the words outloud."

Lee, on topping the first movie:

"Honestly, I don't think any of us would've made this movie if we didn't think it would be as good as, if not better than, the first, because we've all grown as artists and as people, and they're better actors than they were. And when I tell you, the performances that these three and the other six cast members give, it will blow your mind and it will touch your soul."

The Best Man Holiday opens in theaters November 15.

The American Black Film Festival, which opened on Wednesday, June 19, goes until Sunday, June 23. Go to ABFF.com for more info.