Oprah Winfrey says there was pressure to cast Beyoncé or Rihanna in “The Color Purple”

"We're sitting in a room saying, 'Listen, we love Beyoncé. We love Rihanna, but there are other actors who can do this job.'"

Steven Spielberg's big-screen adaptation of The Color Purple was a critical and commercial success when it hit theaters in 1985, and even earned Oprah Winfrey an Oscar nomination for her feature film debut as Sofia. But those accolades certainly didn't alleviate the anxiety of reviving the beloved title as a movie musical.

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter alongside the stars of the new Color Purple — Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, and Danielle Brooks — Winfrey, who returns as a producer alongside Spielberg, acknowledged that there was pressure to land a big-name star or two in order to ensure a hit.

"To be completely honest about it, if you were doing this film for $30 or $40 million, the interest in the cast would be very different," Winfrey said. "Once the film moved to $90 to $100 million, then everybody wants us to bring Beyoncé. 'Can you get Beyoncé or can you get Rihanna?' So we're sitting in a room saying, 'Listen, we love Beyoncé. We love Rihanna, but there are other actors who can do this job.'"

She added, "I do remember conversations about, 'Y'all, Beyoncé is going to be busy this year.' It wasn't even a negotiation, because you're not getting Beyoncé."

Despite the iconic source material, Winfrey and her collaborators still had to fight for more resources and for the cast that director Blitz Bazawule — who recently collaborated with Queen Bey as co-director of her 2020 Lion King visual companion Black Is King — envisioned.

Barrino, who plays Celie (a role she also played in the Broadway adaptation), said the cast wanted to "overdeliver" in support of their director. "It's an all-Black cast and it's a movie that is really deep," she said. "So for Blitz, we all would go hard even when we were tired, when we were upset."

Brooks takes over the role of Sofia from Winfrey, while Henson plays Shug Avery. Halle Bailey (Nettie), Colman Domingo (Mister), Corey Hawkins (Harpo), and H.E.R. (Squeak) round out the star-studded cast of the film, arriving in theaters on Christmas Day.

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Related content:

• How Fantasia injected new life into The Color Purple: 'I got to do it one more time'

• Oprah Winfrey says Tina Turner turned down a role in The Color Purple

• The Color Purple director says visually 'unmatched' movie musical will explore Celie's 'fertile' imagination
  

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