Lance Gross Comes to Hampton Roads | Mid-Atlantic Film Festival

The Mid-Atlantic Film Festival came to Hampton Roads on June 13-14, hosted by the Crispus Attucks Cultural Center with the featured guest Lance Gross. You know the dark chocolate handsomeness that is Lance Gross, from Tyler Perry’s Temptation and NBC’s drama series Crisis. Lance is a great actor and photographer I might add [check out his photography]. I’ve always wanted to attend a film festival, and the Up Close & Personal session with Lance Gross was just an added perk to get me there this time.

I attended the event with photographer Tiffany Josephs, who is also a fan of Lance Gross’ photography. We arrived just in time to sit in on a panel discussion that included participants well versed in entertainment law, content creation and distribution and was geared toward independent film makers. I learned a lot in that 30 minutes about the film industry as a whole.  If you want to venture into film making, this is definitely a festival that you will want to keep an eye out for.

The Up Close & Personal session with Lance Gross was hosted by news anchor Laila Muhammad of WTKR News Channel 3. One thing about Lance is that he is clearly living his life on purpose and pursuing his passion. You can tell that he is genuinely happy because he smiles A LOT. He has a great smile by the way, so we definitely didn’t mind. After listening to his story about how he went from being a star athlete on the track team at Howard University to being discovered by chance by Tyler Perry, I really gained a whole new respect for Lance. His encouragement to up and coming actors – BE PREPARED. He had no idea that Tyler Perry would be visiting his acting class the day he was discovered, and he wasn’t even supposed to perform. But when he was asked, he was prepared. And you know what happens when preparation meats opportunity.

After answering all of the prepared questions, the audience got an opportunity to ask Lance their own questions. What I noticed is that he said hi to everyone as they stepped up to the mic, and thanked them for asking their question. He gave them eye contact, and smiled of course. He even blushed as one attendee said ‘you are so fine!’ and said that he is always is surprised by that and never lets it go to his head. I also found out that Lance Gross and I have something in common – a love for shoes. He said he has over 500 pairs of shoes, which puts my 100-something pairs to shame.

Once the session was over, we hung around a bit because we both didn’t get an opportunity to ask Lance our questions because time had run out. Tiffany so happened to notice that he was still standing off to the side of the stage, so she gave a little ‘psst psst’ and he was so kind and to step back out and talk to us. She was able to talk to him some more about his photography, and he was willing to share some information with her. We got in trouble for holding him up, but fortunately the event staff gave those who were still there a chance to meet and take a picture with him. SCORE!

I gotta say Lance Gross is one cool dude, and I really enjoyed hearing about his journey. I definitely will be following your career more closely, and I know you will continue to do big things because you’re heart is in the right place.  If I had known I was going to get a picture with Lance, I would have totally put on makeup and sucked in my gut.  Fortunately Tiffany cropped my gut out, and I found some lip gloss in the bottom of my purse just in time. Guess that’s why my takeaway from this was to always be prepared.