Jennifer Hudson Opens Up About Losing Her Family to Gun Violence: My Son 'Saved My Life '
Jennifer Hudson (Victor Demarchelier for Glamour)
Since winning an Oscar for her onscreen debut in Dreamgirls in 2006, Jennifer Hudson has taken on a variety of roles, but none mirror her personal life more closely than her role in Spike Lee’s upcoming Chi-Raq, where she plays the mother of a child murdered by a stray bullet as the two walk to school. The story ominously harkens back to the 2008 murder of Hudson’s mother, brother, and nephew at the hands of her sister’s estranged husband.
Hudson does not often speak about the murders, though she does open up to Glamour in their new issue about how she made it through the trauma.
“I went from being an aunt, having a mom, and being a child to not having a mom, becoming a mom, and raising my own child,” Hudson says. Her son David was born in 2009, 10 months after the murders took place. “I tell David [now six] all the time, ‘You saved my life.’”
Jennifer Hudson (Victor Demarchelier for Glamour)
Years after the worst thing that ever happened to her, Jennifer Hudson not only has roles in Spike Lee’s latest and the Anita Hill HBO movie starring Kerry Washington, she’s also preparing for her Broadway debut in The Color Purple as Shug Avery (the role played by Margaret Avery in the 1985 movie).
“I think I’m going to fall in love with Broadway,” Hudson tells Glamour. “I think I’ll be like, I want to stay here.”
But it’s not all curtain calls and roses for Hudson, who says she feels the same fear and hatred many black Americans face on a daily basis.
“Forget culture shock: It’s a time shock,” Hudson says. “This is really happening! But I feel like a majority of us in America are in denial about it.”
She says she struggles with how to raise her son David to be both proud and safe. “I’ve started by telling him some of the world’s greatest people — leaders and athletes — are black people,” she says. “But I also tell him the reality of things. When a little black boy was playing in a playground with a toy gun and got shot by police, I told him, 'You can’t go outside and play with a gun. That’s not safe or smart for you to do.’ I want to teach him, to make him able to make smart decisions for himself.”
