So you audition for Shug and win the role. What’s next?
I get with my vocal coach, Stevie Mackey, and I worked with him for two months to find my voice again, because I had stopped singing like that since college. And I do what I always do with all my characters, I write my back story, what happened to Shug. Yes, things are in the book, but then I add my special sauce to her story to make it mine. The most important thing with playing these characters with bigger-than-life personalities is if you don’t handle it with care or get to why that person is the way they are, then it becomes a caricature and no one cares or empathizes. Cookie was like that: If I didn’t give the “why” to her, she just would have been a sassy Black woman.
What was most daunting about playing Shug?
I’m very confident in my acting because I do the work, but I was nervous about my singing. Fantasia’s nervous about acting because singing is her thing, so we held each other’s hand and lifted each other up.
This movie is more candid about the relationship between Shug and Celie than the Spielberg version.
I’m most proud of that part because remember, in 1985 we couldn’t really show that. We’ve opened up our thinking, because who you lay down with ain’t bothering me. Are you happy? Great, do it, live and let live. And I love the way he handled it, because it wasn’t about sex. It was about the tenderness of unconditional love, and these women hadn’t experienced it.
In your memoir, you’ve said, “I’ve learned to love myself in ways I simply didn’t when I was younger.” How have things changed?
You get older and you realize life is just not about grinding, and that’s the thing that almost took me out: You grind and it’s like, why? No one is paying me my worth, so what am I doing?
What did grinding used to mean to you?
Work, work, work. If I didn’t have nothing else lined up, I was yelling, “Where’s my next job?” So once the pandemic came and you realize you have no control, I was like yeah, when the world opens back up, I don’t think I want to work like that anymore. I want to enjoy it.
