Whoopi Goldberg collaborated with media mogul Tyler Perry for the first time in Perry’s film adaptation For Colored Girls. But Goldberg’s role was especially challenging for the veteran actor, as she was taken back by the role’s demands.
Whoopi Goldberg refused to be called by her character’s name in ‘For Colored Girls’
Perry was hesitant when he was approached to do the movie For Colored Girls. The movie was adapted from a popular literature piece by artist Ntozake Shange, which had several Play and television adaptations prior to Perry’s film. One of the reasons why Perry originally avoided doing the film adaptation was out of fear he couldn’t truly honor Shange’s work.
“I just didn’t want to ruin it,” Perry once told The View (via The Root). “So I wanted to take my time. … [For Colored Girls] haunted me. I didn’t choose it; it chose me.”
No matter how many times he rejected doing the movie, For Colored Girls kept finding its way back to him. Which Perry took as a sign.
“And when something is coming back to you that many times, it is for you. So I had to face my fears and just jump into it,” Perry said.
Before Perry, the project was supposed to be helmed by music video director Nzingha Stewart. However, she’d remain on the film as a producer while trusting Perry to respect Shange’s legacy.
“I talked to the author, optioned the rights and wrote a draft script,” she said. “Tyler Perry is one of those directors who finds his ways into the project by doing everything in the project, writing, producing, directing and playing in it.”
Perry would round up an ensemble cast of stars to help portray Shange’s tragic characters. The actors Perry picked included Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, and Oscar-winner Whoopie Goldberg, who played Alice in the film. Alice was a very religious woman in the feature who took her devotion to God to extreme levels. A bit unhinged and hypocritical, The Color Purple star found it a challenge tapping into her character’s insanity. At times, she couldn’t leave the role behind even after she was done filming, and insisted no one call her by her character’s name.
“On the set the ADs [assistant directors] and guys who would tell you what time to come to set would call you by your character’s names, and I would say, ‘Do not do that, because this woman is crazy like a bedbug,” Goldberg said according to Female First. “She’s not pleasant. She’s crazy and scary and insanely sad.”
Why Tyler Perry regretted ‘For Colored Girls’
Perry had a lot of pride in his adaptation of For Colored Girls. But the filmmaker wished he handled bringing the project to life a little differently. For Colored Girls didn’t receive great film reviews upon its initial release way back in 2010. The Gone Girl star was already used to critics disagreeing with his films most of the time. However, For Colored Girls was a different experience because even Shange had a few criticisms about his interpretation. Although she admired Perry’s vision, she felt the film needed a bit of work.
“I had a lot of qualms. I worried about his characterizations of women as plastic,” she said in an interview with The New York Times, “I think he did a very fine job, although I’m not sure I would call it a finished film.”
Perry paid attention to Shange’s feedback and agreed there might’ve been a different way to approach the adaptation at the time.
“What hurt about For Colored Girls was having Shange disparage it and talk about how bad it was, and have that whole For Colored Girls old guard be very much, like, ‘What the hell?’ But if I have to do it again, I wouldn’t,” Perry told Sirius XM about the film. “Because now I understand what it meant to so many people and what I was trying to do wasn’t necessarily a match. But for people who see it now, the younger generation who’d never heard of For Colored Girls, they get it.”
