‘The Color Purple’ confirmed to compete in comedy/musical categories at Golden Globes [Exclusive]

Joyce Eng
·3 min read
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“The Color Purple” will compete at the Golden Globes in comedy/musical, Gold Derby can exclusively confirm.

Fantasia Barrino, who plays Celie, will be the sole lead acting contender. The film, scheduled to open Christmas Day, also stars Danielle Brooks, Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins, Louis Gossett Jr., H.E.R., Ciara, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and Halle Bailey.

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The categorization, of course, is hardly a surprise, since the movie is an adaptation of the hit 2005 Broadway musical, which was based on Alice Walker‘s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and Steven Spielberg‘s 1985 film adaptation. The original musical received 11 Tony nominations, including Best Musical, and won Best Actress in a Musical for LaChanze. The 2015 revival won Best Revival of a Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Cynthia Erivo, and earned a Best Featured Actress in a Musical bid for Brooks, who reprises her role as Sofia in the upcoming film. Barrino replaced Erivo as Celie during the show’s run.

Directed by Blitz Bazawule, “The Color Purple” was also never going compete in drama at the Globes since it’s an actual musical with non-diegetic music (read: characters break out into song and dance to articulate their feelings and thoughts in surreal numbers or fantasy sequences before they snap back into the narrative). It’s just like recent winners and nominees “West Side Story” (2021), “Tick, Tick… Boom!” (2021), “Mary Poppins Returns” (2018), “The Greatest Showman” (2017) and “La La Land” (2016). Spielberg’s “The Color Purple” — very much not a musical — competed in drama and received five Globe nominations, winning Best Drama Actress for Whoopi Goldberg.

SEE ‘The Color Purple’ trailer: Fantasia Barrino leads an all-star cast in movie musical

The confusion, perhaps for some, comes from the Globes’ own baffling categorization over the years for drama films (usually biopics about a musician) with diegetic music — songs that exist in the worlds of the films and are consciously performed by the characters, whether on stage, in the studio, in the shower or wherever, but they know they’re singing. “What’s Love Go to Do with It” (1993), “Ray” (2004), “Walk the Line” (2005) and “La Vie en Rose” (2007) — all dramatic biopics about musicians who sing in the films — competed in comedy/musical at the Globes before the Hollywood Foreign Press Association took a firmer stance in the 2010s.

Five years ago, there was speculation about “A Star Is Born’s” categorization before Warner Bros., which is also releasing “The Color Purple,” submitted it in drama. Ditto with “Bohemian Rhapsody” later that fall. Both films feature singers singing in realistic situations within the story, and the Queen biopic ended up winning the Best Drama Film Globe. Last season, “Elvis” competed in drama, winning Best Drama Actor for Austin Butler, but some might’ve thought “Elvis,” being the wild, maximalist Baz Luhrmann film that it is, would go comedy/musical. But, once again, the music was diegetic.

In a New York Times feature last week, Bazawule shared that he incorporated additional fantasy sequences with song-and-dance numbers to put viewers inside Celie’s mind. He also wrote three new songs, so you can probably pencil “The Color Purple” in for an original song nomination as well.

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