Brenda Russell: Last News

Angelique Jackson Blitz Bazawule’s “The Color Purple” movie musical has found its Celie and Sofia in Fantasia Barrino and Danielle Brooks.Both actors reprise their respective roles from the stage musical, where Barrino made her Broadway debut in 2007 following her “American Idol” win, and Brooks earned a Tony Award nomination for her portrayal of Sofia in the 2015 revival.Barrino and Brooks’ casting was announced on Thursday as part of the ABC News special “Soul of a Nation Presents: Screen Queens Rising.” During the broadcast, “ABC News Live Prime” anchor Linsey Davis interviewed the women about reprising their roles for the film.The upcoming Warner Bros. movie is an adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway musical, which is itself an adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Thania Garcia Tributes from the music industry have poured in for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” singer, Roberta Flack, who died at age 88 on Monday. The Grammy winner died of undisclosed causes but passed “peacefully surrounded by her family,” according to her representatives. “We are heartbroken that the glorious Roberta Flack passed away this morning, February 24, 2025,” the statement reads.

Warner Bros. PIctures’ The Color Purple will make its streaming debut on Max on February 16.

Director Steven Spielberg’s 1985 version of Alice Walker’s classic, “The Color Purple,” has always been heavily debated. Many knock it for being too tidy and toning down the lesbian love story at its heart. Others, though, consider it a classic and a film that has withstood the test of time a lot better than the movie it lost the Best Picture Oscar to, “Out of Africa.”

Hello and welcome to the Scene 2 Seen Podcast. I am Valerie Complex, an associate editor and film writer at Deadline.

The Color Purple often succeeds as a thoughtful fusion of two other adaptations of Alice Walker’s landmark novel that still confidently hums its own tune.In shakier moments, though, confidence gives way to nostalgia, when the film hammers home its reinterpretations of quotable scenes and dialogue from the Quincy Jones-produced, Steven Spielberg-directed 1985 adaptation with an insistence that borders on flashing “Hey, remember this?” in bold type onscreen.Creating and saying something new with such proven material, while also purposely coaxing audience sentiment for a beloved original, surely posed a formidable challenge for Bazawule and company. And having Jones, Spielberg, and Oprah Winfrey — the big guns and big breakout from the 1985 film — onboard as producers must have eased and complicated the gig in unfathomable ways.Oprah and Jones also had a hand in the original Broadway musical adaptation, which has spun off its own lore and legacy, and adds another meta layer of pop-lit gloss to what this film aims to freshly reinterpret.The stage musical — with a book by Marsha Norman, and lyrics and music by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray — has amassed its own roster of breakout stars, including American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, who made her 2007 Broadway debut stepping into the lead role of Celie, and Orange Is the New Black‘s Danielle Brooks, Tony-nominated for playing Sofia opposite Cynthia Erivo in the 2015 Broadway revival.Barrino and Brooks reprise their respective roles here with a lived-in grace and fortitude that does freshly illuminate Walker’s moving narrative, the lifeblood that courses through every iteration.

Culturally, “The Color Purple” is many different things to many people. To some, it’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1982 novel of the same name by Alice Walker, the 1985 adaptation of that novel by Steven Spielberg, and more recently, it’s the 2005 musical with music and lyrics by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis, and Stephen Bray.

The royally enjoyable cast of Signature Theatre’s The Color Purple (★★★★★) forges a chain of love with no weak links in Timothy Douglas’ knockout staging of the musical based on Alice Walker’s novel and the acclaimed 1985 motion picture.The show marks a milestone for Signature, which, according to artistic director Matthew Gardiner, had developed plans a decade ago for a take on the musical, fresh off a two-year Broadway run of the original Tony-winning production.But those plans were scuttled due to John Doyle’s 2015 Broadway revival starring powerhouses Cynthia Erivo, Jennifer Hudson, and Danielle Brooks.Eventually that production made its way to D.C. in the modified form of a Broadway touring company which, frankly, left a lot of the meat of this turbulent, decades-spanning drama still on the bone.

Angelique Jackson Oscar- and Emmy-nominee Taraji P. Henson will star as Shug Avery in Blitz Bazawule’s “The Color Purple.”The forthcoming Warner Bros. movie is an adaptation of the Tony-winning Broadway musical, which is itself an adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Tessa Thompson is revealing her very public first kiss!