Spike Lee Reveals Distinctive First Assembly and First Date with His Spouse Tonya

Spike Lee shared the unconventional first date he invited his spouse, Tonya Lewis Lee, to greater than 30 years in the past.

Throughout a current interview on the Kelly Corrigan Wonders podcast, the Oscar winner, 67, recalled how he first met his spouse, 58, in September 1992 after which revealed their unconventional first date.

The 2 met in Washington, D.C., on the Congressional Black Caucus, mentioned Lee, clarifying that the occasion was screening a trailer for his movie Malcolm X. Lewis Lee went on behalf of her father, who was the treasurer of Philip Morris on the time.

“So I had a date that evening,” Lee started. “So I will the restroom and I see this lady coming to me — and I do know it’d sound corny, nevertheless it’s true — time stopped.”

“I mentioned, ‘Rattling!’ [Laughs] And so afterward, she mentioned the identical factor. So we simply checked out one another after which could not see [each other] anymore,” the Do The Proper Factor director recalled. 

“So the evening is occurring. You realize, I’m there, I obtained to introduce the trailer for Malcolm X,” Lee mentioned. “And it is time to go, so we’re leaving — Tonya has her model, I’ve my model, and there’s the actual model …”

“You realize what Tonya’s not right here, so that you inform your model,” Corrigan quipped.

“I am happening the escalator, and she or he’s going up the escalator,” Lee continued. “So I am happening the escalator, I gotta assume fast. So inform the individual I’m with, ‘I feel I left my Montblanc pen upstairs,’ , one thing like that.” 

“So I make a U-turn, return on the escalator and discover her and ask her for, , her quantity,” revealed Lee. He then defined that he known as her later that week, and he invited her as his date to “Madonna‘s Intercourse guide social gathering,” which was not going to be in Washington.

The director defined that Lewis Lee was working at a regulation agency on the time. When she headed again to Washington D.C., “everybody” in her workplace had seen her on the information “on the guide social gathering,” Lee recalled, joking how she “was busted.”

In the meantime, in accordance with Lewis Lee, the director noticed her within the crowd and approached her, displaying his curiosity by a collection of questions.

“We walked previous one another. Spike circled again round and proceeded to offer me the third diploma,” she beforehand mentioned, per Essence. “‘Are you an actress? A mannequin? A singer? Who’re you right here with? What do you do? Do you may have a boyfriend?'”

Inside weeks, the filmmaker and lawyer have been photographed at Lee’s Malcolm X film premiere in November 1992.

Later in his podcast interview, Lee praised Lewis Lee’s Emmy-nominated 2022 documentary Aftershock, which tells the story of two households whose lives are modified after two younger ladies die in childbirth. Lee mentioned he’s “very proud” of her work.

“She’s a filmmaker in her personal proper, and went to Sarah Lawrence undergrad, UVA Legislation Faculty,” Lee mentioned, including that Lewis Lee is doing “what she at all times needed” to be a “better individual. She’s doing that now.”

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The couple then married only a 12 months after their first assembly, on Oct. 2, 1993, in a church in New York Metropolis.

The pair share two kids, Satchel, 29, and Jackson, 23.