Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg starred in the title roles of the iconic 1985 film of the same name, which served as the inspiration for the Christmas movie The Color Purple.
While Oprah Winfrey, who portrayed Sofia in the 1985 Stevan Spielberg film, did not reappear as a cast member, Whoopie Goldberg, who played Celie in the original movie, also makes a historic appearance.
Unlike Whoopie Goldberg, who played Sofia in the 1985 film The Color Purple, Oprah declined to make a cameo appearance in the 2023 adaptation of the movie.
Oprah, who is co-producing the movie, explained why she reconsidered her appearance in The Color Purple in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“[A Cameo] would've been good in the church scene, but I thought it would be distracting when Sofia is getting married that if the old original Sofia was just one of the people in the church,” Oprah said.
Oprah also voted against her cameo due to the COVID-19 pandemic that was going on at the time of the production.
“They were shooting that in the middle of Georgia when COVID was [spreading]. Like, OK, well I ain’t sitting in the church all day anyway,” she said.
In the 2023 version of The Color Purple, Whoopie Goldberg makes a brief appearance. In the most recent iteration, Whoopie, who played Celie in the original movie, plays a midwife.
When Goldberg first came on cinema screens during the early hours of the movie, when teenage Celie goes into labor, the audience was mesmerized.
The local midwife, portrayed by Whoopie Goldberg, helps young Celie give birth. “We had to be stealthy about her involvement from the beginning. Only key crew were aware that Whoopi was playing the role,” Blitz Bazawule, the director of the film disclosed to Variety.