Alice Walker, ‘Color Purple’ Cast Celebrate Shug-Celie Romance in Remake: “We Really Needed to See That Love Is Love”

In Steven Spielberg’s 1985 feature adaptation of The Color Purple, the characters of Celie and Shug share a chaste kiss, but not much else hints at the love affair that was integral to author Alice Walker’s novel the movie was based on.

Blitz Bazawule’s new musical adaption of The Color Purple, released on Christmas Day, changes that, as Shug (Taraji P. Henson) and Celie (Fantasia Barrino) share more than a kiss, with the film making it clear the pair share a friendship as well as a romance.

Walker is overjoyed that Shug and Celie’s relationship is finally depicted as she intended. “I really love it that [audiences] have to take away the reality that Shug and Celie become lovers, because I think that we have really needed help there. We really needed to see that love is love. You know, that people love whoever they love, and it is their right to do that,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in a recent interview.

Oprah Winfrey, a producer on the new film and an Oscar nominee for her role as Sofia in the 1985 movie, says just the brief kiss the two characters had in the first film was a lot for its time.

“God, there was so much talk about that kiss in 1985, and it wasn’t even a kiss in 1985. It was like a peck. It wasn’t even a peck, it was a p,” Winfrey joked in an interview with THR for a recent cover story on the film. “And we thought, certainly now you can express the nature of their relationship.”

Walker said the first film’s producers, Steven Spielberg and Quincy Jones, who also produced the new version, tried their best to depict the relationship honestly at a time when homophobia was even more prevalent than it is today.

“Bless Stephen and Quincy they tried their best; I mean they were so afraid because you know the homophobic culture,” she said.

Still, some things have not changed much. Henson expects that there will be some who won’t want to see the same-sex relationship depicted, and she’s already seen some comments on her own social media accounts about that.

“Now, some prude under my comment, somebody was like, ‘I sure hope they don’t explore that lesbian relationship.’ I was like, ‘Well baby, did you read the book?’ We didn’t invent this stuff. This is what she wrote. It is real,” she told THR.

Danielle Brooks, who plays Sofia, added that she thinks there need to be more depictions of same-sex relationships on screen, particularly for African Americans.

“People should see themselves, I think the Black community hides so much and is so ashamed of their sexuality and doesn’t allow people to be free and be who they are,” she said. “We need more stories of black women seeing themselves and loving on other Black women if that’s what they so choose to do. I think it’s a beautiful thing.”

The Color Purple opened to $18.1 million from 3,142 theaters on Monday, the second-best showing ever for a movie opening on Christmas Day and the best since 2009.