Oprah Winfrey on the bold new version of The Color Purple

Published in 1982, Alice Walker’s book The Color Purple, drawn from her own life, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Award for Fiction. In 1985, Steven Spielberg brought it to the silver screen with a powerful adaptation that was nominated for 11 Oscars and introduced movie audiences to Oprah Winfrey the actor for the first time, starring alongside another relative newcomer, Whoopi Goldberg.

In 2005, the musical opened on Broadway; it would go on to garner Tony and Grammy Awards and spawn multiple national tours, productions all over the world and a 2015 revival.

That beloved musical is now reinvented for the screen, now streaming on Showmax, with Spielberg, Winfrey and Quincy Jones, all key to the 1985 film, serving as producers alongside Scott Sanders, who originally conceived of the stage version.

Torn apart from her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey) and her children, Celie (Fantasia Barrino in her major motion picture debut, reprising her 2005 role from Broadway) faces many hardships in her life, including an abusive husband simply called Mister (Colman Domingo). With the support of sultry singer Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson) and stand-her-ground stepdaughter Sofia (Danielle Brooks, Tony-nominated for the role on Broadway), Celie ultimately finds extraordinary strength in the unbreakable bonds of a new kind of sisterhood.

Winfrey firmly believes that “this story endures because for every woman and man who has suffered, who has been invisible, who has felt unseen and unvalued, this is their story of coming into yourself, coming into your own, having that glorious self-discovery reflected to you through the image of someone else. For Celie, that was Shug Avery, who showed her there’s another way. There’s another way. And so as we release it into the world again, it will continue to endure, because generations old and new will come see and feel the same thing.” 

Nevertheless, despite her passion for all things Purple, Winfrey was initially skeptical when Sanders – who’d been instrumental in bringing The Color Purple to Broadway not once, but twice – approached her in 2018 with the idea of making another movie from the material. 

“Scott, who is a Broadway producer extraordinaire, said to me, ‘What if we turned the musical into a film?’ and I was like, ‘Oh, do we need to say anything else?’” Winfrey relates. “I felt the 1985 film was so significant, certainly so significant in my life, that it withstands the test of time. If you look at it now, it still holds up as a film. So, it was decided that I would go to Steven Spielberg and ask for permission to do this on film again.” 

Spielberg was open to the idea, Winfrey recalls. “He realised that at this time in our culture, with the MeToo movement representing a pinnacle moment for women speaking up and speaking out, it was time. And so, from the moment I called Scott and said, ‘Steven says yes, it’s a go,’ I’ve been with this team.” 

The producing team wouldn’t have been complete without the legendary, late Quincy Jones, who had begun his journey with The Color Purple on Spielberg’s film as both producer and composer, and also produced the stage show. 

“Simply put, Alice penned a brilliant and real novel. She carefully painted the lives of the characters in such a beautiful way that it was something I simply couldn’t turn away from,” recalls Jones. “That is why it resonated – and still resonates – with people, from the page to the big screen to the stage.” 

And now to the screen again because, as Jones adds, “It is an American story about the African American experience of the time. It’s heavy, but it matters because it forces you to face it head on. It is our truth, and that truth needs to be passed down. You can’t turn away from powerful content like that.” 

The Color Purple is directed by Blitz Bazawule from a screenplay by acclaimed playwright and WGA Award winner Marcus Gardley (The Maid). Bazawule is a Ghanaian multimedia artist who was a co-director on Beyonce’s Black is King and made his feature debut with the critically acclaimed Afrofuturistic The Burial of Kojo.