Fantasia Barrino Is Grateful for Success After Losing Everything Twice

June 2024 · 3 minute read

Fantasia Barrino is grateful to be starring in 2023’s The Color Purple after overcoming devastating personal hindrances up to now.

“For me, dropping everything two times, having to combat to get back here, it feels good,” the former American Idol winner, who is reprising her role after previously starring as Celie in The Color Purple on Broadway, advised E! News in an interview published on Wednesday, December 6.

In 2008, monetary problems ended in the foreclosure of Barrino’s home. Two years later, she attempted suicide. Now, her role as Celie in the 2023 film is generating Oscar buzz, and Barrino, 39, is extraordinarily grateful.

“That’s why I’m going to experience it because my tale has always been out there. I’ve never been afraid to share it,” she continued. “I believe that when you go through exams, that’s your testimony. How else do you assist any person else?”

Barrino has been very open about her private issues up to now. Her upward thrust from rising up in poverty in North Carolina to song stardom was documented in her 2006 memoir-turned-Lifetime movie, Life Is Not a Fairy Tale: The Fantasia Barrino Story.

After overcoming illiteracy, sexual abuse and extra, Barrino used to be impressed to work along girls she admires together with Taraji P. Henson, Halle Bailey, H.E.R. and Danielle Brooks, the latter of whom also seemed in the 2015 Broadway revival.

“We undergo things, you fall, you get again up,” Barrino shared. “So, for me to be on this room with such a lot of wonderful women like Danielle, I’m having a look at those girls who have a tale, who're mothers, who are wives, who’ve fallen and gotten again up, they’re fighting. I wish to revel in this and know that I worked onerous to get right here.”​

Barrino performed in The Color Purple musical on Broadway from 2007 to 2008. Based on the 1982 novel of the same title by way of Alice Walker, the original 1985 film was once directed through Steven Spielberg and starred Whoopi Goldberg within the role of Celie. The persona is a teen in rural Hartwell, Georgia who had two kids born of rape via her abusive father.

For Barrino, the tale of redemption is what she hopes will likely be uplifting for the target market.

“I’m considering the most efficient praise is looking at those men and women go away the theater gazing the film and announcing they’re healed and they’re whole,” she famous. “And they may be able to let move of things.”

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After starring within the Broadway production, Barrino initially rejected reprising the emotionally draining role. However, after director Blitz Bazawule added a new measurement of hope to Celie’s personality, he convinced Barrino to modify her mind.

“‘I’m giving her an imagination in order that the people will have the ability to see sure things,’” Barrino recalled Bazawule telling her right through a November interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I said, ‘Well, you were given me. You were given me. I got to do it one more time.’What Blitz is coming with this Color Purple, it’s vital for this era.”

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