LaLa Anthony is booked, blessed and very busy, thank you very much.
By now, you’ve seen her on two of the summer’s hottest TV shows — The Chi and BMF — and hopefully soon she’ll debut a new show, a collaboration with her bestie Kim Kardashian and TV creator Kenya Barris, called Group Chat.
The series is about exactly what you think: It dives deep into the conversations of a group of friends as they navigate life in Los Angeles, but the real drama exists inside of their text chain. That show is loosely based on Anthony’s book The Love Playbook: Rules for Love, Sex, and Happiness. And while Hulu has ordered a pilot for it, we still must wait for that one to hit the streamer.
Meantime, we’ll be watching as Anthony takes on her most anticipated role to date: college basketball mom.
Beginning in November, her son Kiyan Anthony will suit up for Syracuse University, his father Carmelo Anthony’s alma mater. She’s already imagining how emotional seeing her baby boy play college basketball will be.
“As a mom, you want to protect your kid from what people can be saying. You’re naturally a protector,” she said when asked the difference between being a basketball wife versus a basketball mom. “The emotions are very, very different.”
Somehow, she’ll figure out how to navigate all of the work she’s doing in Hollywood — and there is lots of work. Anthony joked that she barely sleeps these days. And then there will be flying from California to New York to see her son once he suits up for the Orange.
It’s an emotional space to live in for the former host-turned-actress and now show creator, but it’s one she’s been eagerly expecting since Kiyan made his basketball intentions known.
Recently, I caught up with La La Anthony to chat about her work in Hollywood, when she felt people started seeing her as more than her iconic MTV VJ days, and on what the difference between being a basketball wife versus a basketball mom really means.