While rave reviews continue to roll in for the The Color Purple, many are wondering why Oprah Winfrey didn’t make a cameo in the film that she helped popularize.
In speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Winfrey — who played Sofia in the original 1985 movie — divulged that she did give some serious consideration to appearing in one specific scene.
“[A cameo] would’ve been good in the church scene, but I thought it would also be distracting when Sofia is getting married if the old original Sofia was just one of the people in the church,” Winfrey conceded. “And then they were shooting that in the middle of Georgia when COVID was [spreading] like, ‘OK, well I ain’t sitting in that church all day anyway.'”
Though she does not make a cameo in the new version of the film, Winfrey told People during a promotional event that doing the original film is still probably “the most important thing that had ever happened to me and continues to be a central theme in my life.”
“It’s as big a miracle as my whole life has been because I didn’t know one single soul in the business,” Winfrey said of her first-ever film role.
The Color Purple is currently playing in theaters across the country.
