‘The Color Purple’ Broadway Actress Says She Should Be Paid for ‘I’m Here’ Added Song Lyrics: ‘Want My Royalty Fee’

December 26, 2023 @ 4:18 PM

Broadway’s original “The Color Purple” actress and singer Rhonda LaChanze Sapp, known professionally as LaChanze, called out the 2023 film Tuesday for allegedly failing to pay her for lyrics she says she contributed to a later version of the song “I’m Here.”

On Tuesday, the Tony-winning Broadway star addressed some of the inbox messages she said she’d received from followers and fans about her involvement in the film’s production process and its press tour.

I am getting a lot of DM’s and posts about why I’ve been left out of the press as the original Celie in the @TheColorPurple (musical). I am thrilled for the movie’s success! Happy for all involved. However, I do want my royalty fee for the lyrics I added to “I’M HERE”. 💜

— LaChanze (@laChanze) December 26, 2023

“I am getting a lot of DM’s and posts about why I’ve been left out of the press as the original Celie in the @TheColorPurple (musical). I am thrilled for the movie’s success!” LaChanze wrote. But, while stating that she is glad the film is doing well, she also shared that she wasn’t paid for her work on the song “I’m Here.”

“Happy for all involved. However, I do want my royalty fee for the lyrics I added to “I’m Here,” LaChanze continued.

The track, which is performed by Fantasia Barrino in the 2023 musical film, closes out the movie. When the movie was adapted into a Broadway musical in 2005, LaChanze took on the leading role as Celie in 2006, winning the Tony Award that year for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical.

Barrino carried the character forward when she starred as Celie in the Broadway production in 2007 and 2008. In an interview with Time published Monday, Sapp shared that during a workshop for the show, she helped shape and write the song, mentioning that the song has three unique changes in tempo.

“I said, ‘I want to flirt with somebody, I know I got my sister. She can’t be with me. But she’s still my sister, and I know she loves me and my children,” LaChanze said of her time working with the musical’s composers Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray, who asked her to describe how she felt while playing Celie. “I didn’t put it together in the way they did, but my feelings, my emotions and my thought about what I was experiencing as the actor embodying Celie they put in the song. So I like to say I helped write the song.”

Russell, Willis and Bray are credited as the song’s writers. TheWrap has reached out to representatives for LaChanze and for the musical movie adaptation of “The Color Purple.”

“The Color Purple” from director Blitz Bazawule scored the best Christmas day opening since 2009 with a whopping $18.1 million, gaining attention from fans of the 1985 film and the Broadway show. The new movie stars Barrino, Halle Bailey, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo, Corey Hawkins.