The press conference, assembled all of the primary female characters in the film, with the exception of Whoopi Goldberg who is working on a play in London. Ironically, the conference took place at the London Hotel in anticipation of the Nov. 5 release.
This was a movie that was meant to be made. The book and the play called out to Tyler Perry for years before he relented and wrote the screenplay. Whoopie Goldberg tried to remake the classic play before the concept sunk due to financial constraints. And actress Loretta Devine was cast in the theater version of For Colored Girls way back in the 1970s, but had to turn down the role due to other commitments.
Here are some interesting quotes from the For Colored Girls press conference and premiere:
Janet Jackson, who heard about the book and play as a child when she traveled to New York to visit her older brother Michael who was starring in the movie The Wiz. “I was 10 years old then. Thirty-three years later, to be part of the film version — it’s incredible.”
Tessa Thompson, who plays a talented teenager in the film: “I have a 15-year-old sister. So to play a 15-year-old in this movie, I was just estatic to get the scene done with Macy Gray.”
“Women are usually the backbone of Tyler’s stories. Maybe because he was primarily raised by women — his mother, his aunt and his grandmother — he is comfortable writing women’s emotions and perspectives,” says Roger Bobb, the executive vice president and producer at Tyler Perry Studios.
“Ntozake Shange was new to everybody, and it was really a revolutionary piece. At that particular time, there wasn’t any theater about black women and the things that concerned them most in their lives. Ntozake touched upon women’s true emotions and experiences; there were poems about race, about abuse, about love, about date rape, about abortion. She didn’t leave anything out,” says Loretta Devine, who was conincidentally cast in the play when the play became an Off-Broadway sensation in 1976. However, Devine had to turn down the role when she couldn’t get time off from graduate school.
“In some ways, the film is like a magnificent opera. With an opera, you are floored by the music, but you forget that the characters are singing because you’re just so pulled in to the dramatic reality of [the women’s] situation,” says Kerry Washington.
“You can learn a lot of about a society by the way they treat their women,” says living legend Phylicia Rashad. –terry shropshire
