Oprah_ A Biography - Kitty Kelley [71]
AN IMMUTABLE bond exists among black women born in the South and rocked in the arms of grandmothers who wore Sunday church hats, swayed to spirituals, and instilled reverence for “the ancestors.” When these women meet as strangers they embrace as sisters because they are connected to the soil of country roads in Arkansas, bayous in Louisiana, backwoods in Georgia, and swamps of Mississippi. They know each other before they are introduced.
“It was that connection to the goodness and strength of southern women that bound me to Oprah,” recalled Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple. “I wrote the role of Sofia based on my mother and gave Quincy Jones [producer] and Steven Spielberg [director] a picture of her when she was Oprah’s age. So when Quincy saw Oprah on television he was looking at my mother.… When I met Oprah, I, too, saw my mother. That’s the root of my affection for her, and despite the distance she’s put between us since we made the film in 1985, I still feel grateful to her. She arrived to carry the spirit of my mother and she did it really, really well.”
Oprah credited her self-confidence to her Southern roots. “I’m very blessed because I was raised in the South in Nashville and Mississippi,” she said. “The whole Southern upbringing left me feeling I can do anything. It didn’t do to me what it does to a lot of people. I never in my life felt oppressed.”
Almost all the women who worked on The Color Purple had some connection to the South, and that sensibility of sisterhood contributed to what Alice Walker called the “holy experience” of making the movie. Before she sold the film rights, she insisted that the producer and director commit themselves to a diverse cast and crew. “I got it in writing that at least fifty percent of those hired had to be black, female or other minority,” she said. “It was a happy set because we all came together in a blessed way to tell the story.”
The director, Steven Spielberg, did not want a cast of unknowns for what he called his first serious film. After signing Whoopi Goldberg, then unknown, for the lead of Celie, he hoped to sign Tina Turner for the singing role of Shug Avery. He planned to eliminate the lesbianism in the novel and film only one sweet kiss between Celie and Shug, but he wanted Whoopi Goldberg to feel comfortable. “If I’m going to kiss a woman, please let it be Tina,” Whoopi said. Turner was also the first choice of the writer, the producer, and the casting director. Assuming she was on board, Quincy Jones scheduled her meeting with the director, but, as he said later, she flipped on him.
“I wouldn’t do a black picture if I was dying,” Turner said. “It took me twenty years to get out of that black shit and I ain’t going back.”
Jones said he was so shocked he couldn’t open his mouth. “But I certainly understood her feelings about not wanting to play an abused woman.” He knew about the years of beatings she had endured from her former husband. So the role went to the actress Margaret Avery, who performed brilliantly and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. But Tina’s rejection left the cast with no known stars and a soupçon of bile. “She turns down The Color Purple and she does Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. All the