A behind-the-scenes look into the making of the new feature film “The Color Purple,” and the impact the story has had on our culture. Oprah Winfrey takes viewers inside the four-decade phenomenon, exploring the importance of the novel, films and musical, and the ever-evolving conversation around this seminal work.
12-28-2023
56 min
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Main Cast
Movie Details
Production Info
Director:
Brad Pavone
Production:
Harpo Productions
Key Crew
Co-Executive Producer:
Brad Pavone
Executive Producer:
Oprah Winfrey
Novel:
Alice Walker
Locations and Languages
Country:
US
Filming:
US
Languages:
en
Main Cast
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Gail Winfrey (born Orpah Gail Winfrey; January 29, 1954), also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
Alice Malsenior Tallulah-Kate Walker is an American novelist, short story writer, poet, and social activist. In 1982, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, which she was awarded for her novel The Color Purple. The book became a bestseller and was subsequently adapted into a critically acclaimed 1985 movie directed by Steven Spielberg, featuring Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg, as well as a 2005 Broadway musical totaling 910 performances. Over the span of her career, Walker has published seventeen novels and short story collections, twelve non-fiction works, and collections of essays and poetry.
An American comedian, actress, singer-songwriter, political activist, and talk show host. Goldberg made her film debut in The Color Purple (1985) playing Celie, a mistreated black woman in the Deep South. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress and won her first Golden Globe Award for her role in the film. In 1990, she starred as Oda Mae Brown, a psychic helping a slain man (Patrick Swayze) find his killer in the blockbuster film Ghost. This performance won her a second Golden Globe and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Notable later films include Sister Act and Sister Act 2, The Lion King, Made in America, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Girl, Interrupted and Rat Race. She is also acclaimed for her roles as the bartender Guinan in Star Trek: The Next Generation and as Terry Dolittle in Jumpin' Jack Flash. Her latest role is the voice of Stretch in Toy Story 3. Goldberg has been nominated for 13 Emmy Awards for her work in television. She was co-producer of the popular game show Hollywood Squares from 1998 to 2004. She has been the moderator of the daytime talk show The View since 2007. Goldberg has a Grammy, two Emmys, two Golden Globes, a Tony, and an Oscar. In addition, Goldberg has a British Academy Film Award, four People's Choice Awards and has been honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.
Blitz Bazawule is a filmmaker and musician born in Accra, Ghana and based in Brooklyn, New York. Blitz's short films Native Sun (2012) and Diasporadical Trilogìa (2016) have premiered at BAM New Voices in Black Cinema. His debut feature film The Burial of Kojo was released in 2018, later released on Netflix via Ava DuVernay's ARRAY distribution company. Bazawule wrote, directed, co-edited and co-prouced the film, as well as providing the soundtrack. As a musician and band leader, Bazawule has released 4 studio albums under the name Blitz the Ambassador - Stereotype (2009), Native Sun (2011), Afropolitan Dreams (2014) and Diasporadical (2016) as well as the soundtrack album to The Burial of Kojo (2019) - and has performed at music festivals such as Roskilde (Denmark), Solidays (France), Mawazine (Morocco) and Sauti za Busara (Zanzibar). Blitz is a 2016 TED Fellow and recipient of the Vilcek Prize.
Fantasia Monique Barrino (born June 30, 1984) commonly known as Fantasia, is an American R&B singer, Broadway and television actress who rose to fame as the winner of the third season of the reality television series American Idol in 2004. Following her victory, she released her debut single, "I Believe", which debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Subsequently, she released her debut album, Free Yourself, which went on to be certified Platinum by the RIAA and garnered Barrino three Grammy nominations in 2006. Her accolades include two Billboard Music Awards and a Grammy Award, along with nominations for a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA Award, and three American Music Awards.
In 2006, she released her second album, Fantasia, which featured the single "When I See U" which topped the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for eight weeks. The album was certified Gold by the RIAA and received three Grammy nominations in 2008. She then played the part of Celie in the Broadway musical The Color Purple, for which she won a 2007 Theatre World Award. Her third studio album, Back to Me, was released worldwide on August 24, 2010 and features the single "Bittersweet," which peaked in the top ten on the R&B chart. The single won her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.
Taraji P. Henson (born September 11, 1970) is an American actress, producer and singer. She studied acting at Howard University and began her Hollywood career as guest star on several television shows before making her breakthrough in the movie Baby Boy (2001). In 2005, she starred in Hustle & Flow and played Queenie in David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), for which she received an Academy Award nomination.
In 2016, Time named Henson one of the 100 most influential people in the world on the annual Time 100 list. Henson also released an autobiography titled Around The Way Girl.
Danielle Brittany Brooks (born September 17, 1989) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as prison inmate Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson on the Netflix comedy-drama series Orange Is the New Black (2013–2019). In 2015, she made her Broadway debut in the musical revival of The Color Purple as Sofia, for which she received a nomination for the Tony Award and won the Grammy Award. In 2023, Brooks reprised her role as Sofia in the film adaptation of The Color Purple and was nominated for an Academy Award, British Academy Film Award, and Golden Globe Award for her performance.
After appearing in the HBO series Girls (2014), Netflix's Master of None (2015–2017), and the animated sitcom Close Enough (2020–2022), in 2021, she received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Television Movie as an executive producer on Robin Roberts Presents: Mahalia. In 2022, she hosted Netflix's reality series Instant Dream Home and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Daytime Program Host. The same year Brooks starred in the superhero series Peacemaker (2022–present), and returned to Broadway in the revival of the August Wilson play The Piano Lesson.
Steven Allan Spielberg (born December 18, 1946) is an American film director, writer and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spielberg is the recipient of various accolades, including three Academy Awards, a Kennedy Center honor, four Directors Guild of America Awards, two BAFTA Awards, a Cecil B. DeMille Award and an AFI Life Achievement Award. Seven of his films have been inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant".
Spielberg was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. He moved to California and studied film in college. After directing several episodes for television including Night Gallery and Columbo, he directed the television film Duel (1971) which gained acclaim from critics and audiences. He made his directorial film debut with The Sugarland Express (1974), and became a household name with the 1975 summer blockbuster Jaws. He then directed huge box office successes Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) and the Indiana Jones original trilogy (1981-89). Spielberg subsequently explored drama in the acclaimed The Color Purple (1985) and Empire of the Sun (1987).
After a brief hiatus, Spielberg directed the science fiction thriller Jurassic Park (1993), the highest-grossing film ever at the time, and the Holocaust drama Schindler's List (1993), which has often been listed as one of the greatest films ever made. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for the latter and for the 1998 World War II epic Saving Private Ryan. Spielberg continued in the 2000s with science fiction films A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005). He also directed the adventure films The Adventures of Tintin (2011) and Ready Player One (2018); the historical dramas Amistad (1997), Munich (2005), War Horse (2011), Lincoln (2012), Bridge of Spies (2015) and The Post (2017); the musical West Side Story (2021); and the semi-autobiographical drama The Fabelmans (2022). He has been a producer on several successful films, including Poltergeist (1982), Gremlins (1984), Back to the Future (1985) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) as well as the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001).
Spielberg co-founded Amblin Entertainment and DreamWorks, and has served as a producer for many successful films and television series. He is also known for his long collaboration with the composer John Williams, with whom he has worked for all but five of his feature films. Several of Spielberg's works are among the highest-grossing and greatest films all time. Premiere ranked him first place in the list of 100 Most Powerful People in Movies in 2003. In 2013, Time listed him as one of the 100 most influential people.
Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, musician, songwriter, composer, arranger, and film and television producer. His career spans 70 years in the entertainment industry with a record of 80 Grammy Award nominations, 28 Grammys, and a Grammy Legend Award in 1992.
Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor before working on pop music and film scores. He moved easily between musical genres, producing Lesley Gore's major pop hits of the early 1960s (including "It's My Party") and serving as an arranger and conductor for several collaborations between the jazz artists Frank Sinatra and Count Basie in the same time period. In 1968, Jones became the first African American to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song for "The Eyes of Love" from the film Banning. Jones was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score for his work on the 1967 film In Cold Blood, making him the first African American to be nominated twice in the same year. Jones produced three of popstar Michael Jackson's most successful albums: Off the Wall (1979), Thriller (1982), and Bad (1987). In 1985, Jones produced and conducted the charity song "We Are the World", which raised funds for victims of famine in Ethiopia.
In 1971, Jones became the first African American to be the musical director and conductor of the Academy Awards. In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the academy's Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. He is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the second most Oscar-nominated African American, with seven nominations each. In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, of the Ahmet Ertegun Award. He was named one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century by Time.
Marcus Gardley (born 1977/1978) is an American poet, playwright and screenwriter from West Oakland, California. He is an ensemble member playwright at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago and an assistant professor of Theater and Performance Studies at Brown University.
Known For
Colman Domingo
Colman Jason Domingo (born November 28, 1969) is an American actor, playwright, and director. Prominent on both screen and stage since the 2010s, Domingo has received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, and nominations for an Academy Award and two Tony Awards. Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2024.
Domingo's early Broadway roles include the 2005 play Well and the 2008 musical Passing Strange. He gained acclaim for his role as Mr. Bones in the Broadway musical The Scottsboro Boys (2011), for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. He reprised the role in the 2014 West End production, receiving a nomination for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role in a Musical. In 2018, he wrote the book for the Broadway musical Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.
After early roles in various incarnations of the Law & Order series and as part of the main cast for The Big Gay Sketch Show, Domingo had his breakthrough playing Victor Strand in the AMC series Fear the Walking Dead (2015–2023). He gained wider acclaim for his recurring role as the recovering drug addict Ali on the HBO series Euphoria (2019–present), winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in 2022.
Domingo received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of civil rights activist Bayard Rustin in the Netflix biopic Rustin (2023). His other notable film appearances include roles in Lincoln (2012), The Butler (2013), Selma (2014), If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020), Zola (2021), The Colour Purple (2023), and Sing Sing (2023).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Colman Domingo, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Corey Hawkins (born October 22, 1988) is an American actor. He is perhaps best known for playing Dr. Dre in the 2015 biopic film, Straight Outta Compton. Hawkins was born in Washington, D.C. where he attended the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. He graduated from the Juilliard School in New York City, a member of the Drama Division's Group 40. While studying at Juilliard, Hawkins received the prestigious John Houseman Award for excellence in classical theatre. Upon graduation, he began a career starring Off-Broadway and guest starring on television. Hawkins garnered a brief role in Marvel Studios's Iron Man 3 and went on to star opposite Liam Neeson andJulianne Moore in Universal Pictures' action-thriller Non-Stop.
In 2013, Hawkins made his Broadway debut as Tybalt in the revival of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. And in 2015, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Hawkins would join the cast of AMC's The Walking Dead as Heath, a key character from Robert Kirkman's comic series. Hawkins played Dr. Dre in the biopic Straight Outta Compton, from Universal Pictures, which was theatrically released on August 14, 2015. He has been cast in Kong: Skull Island, alongside Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson and Tom Hiddleston.
Gabriella Wilson, better known professionally as H.E.R. (pronounced "her", a backronym for Having Everything Revealed), is an American singer and songwriter.
