The Color Purple remake announces star-studded cast

This month, Oprah Winfrey secured headlines once again as she revealed the star-studded cast of the newest rendition of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.

The new film, which will be directed by Black Is King’s Blitz Bazawule, is set to reimagine the iconic novel, movie, and musical for a new generation, featuring a revamped score and elements of magical realism in the cinematography.

Since the publication of the original novel, The Color Purple has become more than a story, evolving into a cultural touchstone with a long history of continuous impact with each remake and rendition and re-adaptation of the text for every new generation that encounters it. In a recent interview with Vanity Fair, Oprah, who portrayed the role of Sofia in the 1985 film version, spoke to The Color Purple’s impactful legacy, explaining, “I don’t know anybody who’s ever been associated with it whose life didn’t get enhanced. Everything comes from the original words of Alice Walker, which were grounded in love, really…and that just gets passed on and passed on and passed on.”

Winfrey, who starred in the 1985 film, and Steven Spielberg, who directed it, are returning as producers of the musical remake along with Scott Sanders and Quincy Jones.

The lead role of Celie will be filled by Fantasia Taylor, the superstar singer who starred in the same role on Broadway in 2015. Her on-stage co-star from the same production, Danielle Brooks,  most frequently recognized for her performance in Orange Is the New Black, will also be bringing her Broadway role to the big screen as Sofia.

The remake will add several blockbuster heavy-hitters into the mix as well. Shug Avery is to be portrayed by Golden Globe Award winner Taraji P. Henson, whose resume includes major roles in the critically-acclaimed Empire and Hidden Figures. Young actress and songstress Halle Bailey will be playing Nettie, Celie’s beloved sister.

Among the most exciting of the announcements includes the casting of R&B singer H.E.R., who will be making her film debut in the role of Squeak. Filling out the male roles will be Corey Hawkins as Harpo and Colman Domingo as Mister.

The Color Purple was first published in 1982 to critical acclaim, going on to win both a National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction – making Alice Walker the first woman of color to win the prestigious honor. The epistolary structure of the novel is built on a series of letters predominantly composed by the text’s leading character, Celie. As a poor Black woman growing up in the rural American South in the early years of the 20th-century, Celie’s story is rife with trauma, from sexual and physical abuse in her early childhood to being torn from her sister, Nettie, to whom a majority of Celie’s letters are written. Throughout the groundbreaking novel, Walker critically examines topics including racism, poverty, abuse, misogyny, spirituality, and homosexuality with both candor and eloquence previously not afforded to such themes within the literature.

Still, despite the glowing reception from both casual readers and literary critics, the subject matter Walker addresses placed The Color Purple in conversations that characterized the book as “controversial.” From 1990 to 1999, The Color Purple-ranked in the top 20 of the American Library Association’s most frequently banned books.

Just three years after its initial publication, The Color Purple was adapted into a blockbuster film boasting a star-studded cast of Whoopie Goldberg, Oprah Winfrey, and Danny Glover, with acclaimed director Steven Spielberg at the helm. Still, controversy again continued to circulate The Color Purple, as the film took home zero wins of its eleven Academy Award nominations. Despite the perceived Oscar snub, the film’s overall reception was indisputably positive.

The success of the movie version led to the stage musical adaptation twenty years later, in 2005. The Broadway production, which ran through 2008, received eleven Tony nominations. Three national tours and a West End production later, the musical was revived on Broadway in 2015 with a fresh powerhouse ensemble of stars including Jennifer Hudson, Danielle Brooks, and Cynthia Erivo. Repeating history, the Broadway revival was again a smash hit both with audiences and awards season, with the production taking home two Tony Awards in 2016.

Taken at the surface, The Color Purple is a small story – a few characters, mostly in a small Southern town, and even the novel itself is fairly short. But, Celie’s transformation from the novel’s opening pages to its conclusion is defined by her newfound capability of seeing her life as applicable – and valuable – beyond the small spaces prescribed to her by her birth and circumstances. The undeniable beauty of The Color Purple today is that the evolution of the story as a cultural phenomenon parallels the very evolution of its lead character. The Color Purple has transcended its initial boundaries, from page to screen to stage and across countries all over the globe. The transformation and growth Celie find within herself is the transformation and growth The Color Purple has given readers and audiences around the world, and it continues to do so today.