Fantasia Barrino is a great advocate of therapy and before being chosen to star The color Purple, had been going for years. However, the actress and singer felt that she had to take a break if she really wanted to tap into the pain of the main character, Celie, who has suffered sexual and domestic abuse since childhood.
“[My therapist] He kept asking me, ‘Are you sure?’ I said, ‘I’m sure,’ she said in a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter for his cover story on the film. “I said, ‘I need to go back.’ “I need to go back and I need to go back and put myself in Celie’s shoes as I dig up some of my things and add them to Celie’s.”
Barrino, who rose to fame two decades ago as winner of the american idolHe has spoken out about the abuse he suffered in his life and admits that he once considered taking his own life. She had played the role of Celie in 2007 in the musical version of The color Purple on Broadway, and the stress of the role made her hesitant to take on the character again for the film adaptation of the musical.
“I think I’m wiser now, older and in a different place, and I don’t think I gave Celie time when I was younger and played it. “I didn’t give her, what I mean by time, is I didn’t think to dig deeper and find out things about her,” he said.
While she paused therapy, she made sure she had other support, including her entire family. She also asked family members about the trauma they went through.
“I would ask my mother certain things about her upbringing, my grandmother on my mother’s side and my father’s side because my mother was very close to my father’s mother,” Barrino explained. “And all those things helped me embody the older version of Celie.”
After the film finished filming, she spoke again to her therapist, whom she credits with her healing and her ability to forgive her abusers, “for my peace, for my freedom.”
“I still do therapy, and I think it’s very expensive, but I wish a lot of our people could get it because of all the traumas and the generational curses and the things that have been carried on, which a lot of that is in The color Purple,” she said.
Although playing the role on Broadway exhausted Barrino, she saw this opportunity to play Celie once again as a blessing: “But I thank God for Celie because she continued to heal me.”