The Color Purple remake star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor was disheartened that the film seemed to cut out a central queer story line.
“The Color Purple is a book about Black lesbians. Whether the choice was made to focus on that or not in the cinematic iterations of The Color Purple, it’s still a movie about Black lesbians,” Ellis-Taylor, 54, told BuzzFeed in an interview published on Friday, February 16. “People can try to say the story is about sisterhood, but it’s a story about Black lesbians. Period.”
She continued: “What is hard for me is that when we have those spaces where we can honor the truth of that, we walk away from it. We suppress it. We hide it. We sanitize it. In the sanitizing of it, someone like me — knowing that The Color Purple is a book about Black lesbians — looks at that and thinks, ‘You’re sanitizing me and my friends, and other people who I love and adore. Why?’ [If it’s because] you don’t want to be offensive, then you’re saying to the world that I’m offensive.”
Ellis-Taylor, who played Mama in the 2023 remake of The Color Purple, publicly came out as bisexual in 2022. She told Variety that June it was “important to say because I’m not alone.”
Her The Color Purple version was adapted from Alice Walker’s 1982 novel. The book was previously adapted for film in 1985 and directed by Steven Spielberg. A musical version was mounted on Broadway in 2005 and revived in 2015. In both the novel and original film, vibrant blues singer Shug Avery strikes up a romance with main character Celie.
“The first time that I saw The Color Purple, it [was] before I understood who I was. I knew that watching Margaret Avery kiss Whoopi Goldberg was astonishing, exciting, and affirming,” Ellis-Taylor added. “It showed me the possibility of myself and the possibility to love a woman who loves me in return. I’ll never get over that. It lives with me. It’s hard seeing so much about the film [being discussed], but [the queer element] is the least discussed. Why are we talking about it almost in a sort of incidental way?”
Ellis-Taylor further posited that Walker penned The Color Purple “with intention” as she “was writing about herself.”
“I just want that part of the book to be portrayed in the films with intention, instead of it being incidental,” Ellis-Taylor added. “I want people to walk away from The Color Purple thinking, ‘I just saw a movie about Black lesbians.’ I don’t think that has happened.”
In the 2023 movie, Shug is played by Taraji P. Henson and Celie is portrayed by Fantasia Barrino. The characters’ relationship is reduced to more of a sisterhood instead of a romance. Neither Henson, 53, Barrino, 39, nor film producers have addressed the backlash.
