Throughout the production of the new film adaptation of “The Color Purple,” Fantasia Barrino-Taylor, who plays protagonist Celie Johnson, often asked God for strength.
“I was crying on the way to the forum. I was crying when I left the forum,” she said. “I was talking to God and saying, 'You have to make this make sense. Make it make sense. Something has to come out of this.'”
The film, based on Alice Walker's 1982 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, details the transformative journey of a rural Georgia woman in the early 20th century. First adapted as an Oscar-nominated film in 1985 by Steven Spielberg, then reinterpreted for Broadway in 2005, it has been adapted again as a musical. However, Celie's role remains one of relentless trauma, through decades of abuse first at the hands of her stepfather and then her husband, until she finds the strength to stand up for herself. When Barrino-Taylor took on the role in the original Broadway run, and then in the film, it meant enduring relentless abuse.
Before production, he had “started therapy for trauma,” he said. A wife, mother of four and grandmother, Barrino-Taylor, now 39, was committed to doing her best. “She wanted to go on this healing journey,” she said. “So I had to stop therapy and allow Celie to be my life coach. It was not easy”.
Barrino-Taylor, like Celie, is warm and authentic. Ella Tasia, as she is known, is the daughter of a preacher and she was raised in the Baptist church, where at age 5 she began singing gospel. In 2003, still a teenager, she won the third season of “American Idol,” launching a career as a Grammy-winning singer, songwriter, actress and author. Along the way, she battled her personal misfortune.
It was during her healing process, years later, that producer Scott Sanders asked Barrino-Taylor to play Celie in the film adaptation. They had worked closely when she starred in the play on Broadway in 2007-2008. She rejected him.
“It was very difficult for her to separate being Fantasia Barrino during the day and being Celie Johnson at night,” explained Sanders, who knew that despite her experience with the play, Barrino-Taylor would be wonderful. Barrino-Taylor agreed, suggesting her youth was also to blame. “I felt like she was carrying my cross and Celie's cross,” she said. “And that was an excessive burden at my age. “I hadn’t begun to deal with the traumas in my life.”
It wasn't until director Blitz Bazawule joined the project that things began to change. A Ghanaian filmmaker known for Beyoncé's “Black Is King,” wanted to incorporate magical realism in “The Color Purple.” Although he respected Spielberg's drama, Bazawule said he wanted to create a film that could capitalize not only on Celie's triumph, but also on her learning how to love, who to love, and how to forgive. And he knew Barrino-Taylor was the one for that vision.
Bazawule “allowed me to see that he was giving Celie imagination,” Barrino-Taylor recalled.
Celie's thoughts are explored in several scenes, with the help of songs. Her confidence steadily increases in the presence of Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), the free-spirited local celebrity and, later, her lover. Mr. Bazawule's intention was to oscillate between joy and pain. He explained that the approach “gave us a much more complete picture of their struggles.”
Celie experiences joy in part through dance.
“When they first told me I had to learn tap dancing, I thought they were crazy,” Barrino-Taylor said. After a full day of filming, she practiced so hard and so late that her mother confronted her and asked why she was trying so hard. “I told her, 'Mom, I have to do it for Celie,'” she said.
After Celie has been slapped by her husband and she has taken care of her children and worked in the garden, Barrino-Taylor said, “I have to show these girls that, through Celie, we don't have to stop moving.”
TIFFANY MARTINBROUGH.THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/7052060, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-01-02 19:15:05
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