Alison: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart, live from the WNYC Studios in SoHo. Thanks for spending part of your day with us. I'm really grateful you're here. On today's show, I'll speak with Russ Bengtson, the author of this great book called A History of Basketball in Fifteen Sneakers. We'll hear live in-studio performance from jazz vibranist, vibraphonists, Yuhan Su, and I'll speak with one of the curators behind this stunning new exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is titled Women Dressing Women. That is our plan. Let's get this started with the director and one of the stars of The Color Purple.

Who better to direct a movie musical adaptation of the beloved Alice Walker novel The Color Purple than someone with music and literary chops and who is no stranger to working with strong women? Blitz Bazawule is a true multi-hyphenate. He's a visual artist, a rapper, music producer, novelist, and filmmaker. He partnered with Beyoncé to co-direct the visual album Black Is King and made his feature film directorial debut with 2018's The Burial of Kojo. Blitz's new version of The Color Purple melds all of that experience and really goes for it, combining big, lush musical numbers with moments of quiet intimacy.

The film stars Fantasia Barrino as the downtrodden but resilient Celie. Fantasia performed the role on Broadway in the early aughts. Also, reprising her Tony-nominated role is our other guest, Danielle Brooks, who returns as the bold and joyful Sofia, a friend who teaches Celie that it's important to stand up for herself, something Sofia has to remember as well after being beaten and jailed for clapping back at some racist white folks. Both Fantasia and Danielle have been nominated for Golden Globes for their performances.

Rounding out the central trio is Emmy and Oscar nominee Taraji P Henson as Shug Avery, the blues singer who steals Celie's heart and protects her from her abusive husband. The Color Purple will be in theaters on December 25th, and joining us now to discuss the film is director Blitz Bazawule. Blitz, nice to meet you.

Blitz: Such a pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Alison: Welcome back to the show, Danielle Brooks. Hey, Danielle.

Danielle: Hey. Good to be back.

Alison: Blitz, when did you know you wanted to add filmmaking to your resume in addition to music, or novel-writing?

Blitz: Filmmaking has always been, I'll say, my end goal. The beauty of the medium itself is it's an amalgam of all of these other mediums. A little bit of writing, a little bit of literature, a little bit of photography and fine art, a little bit of music and cadence in, and sound design. Even though it seemed I'd been creating in these siloed mediums, my goal was always to find a medium that truly united it all. Film has always been the north star for me.

Alison: Danielle, what did you learn about Sofia and your time playing her on the Broadway stage that you were able to bring to this performance on screen?

Danielle: It's truly her strength. This is a woman who is a radical woman, who moves how she wants to move and does life the way she wants to do life. It's been such a joy to get to step in her shoes because, as an artist, as you're growing, I think characters give you a gift. That's what she's given me is the strength and belief to stand firm in who I am on a daily basis, which has been a lot of fun. It's also been cool to step into her shoes again because you discover new things about the character.

There's actions and choices, objectives that I had in the past when I did it on Broadway that now are completely different, stepping into the film because of the relationships or really just the depth and the more that I've grown as a person and had more of my own personal experiences. Also what and how we've crafted Blitz and our lovely writer Marcus Garley have crafted this script is shifted a lot in a beautiful way that I think adds so much more layers of humanity to the characters. That's been a lot of fun to get to live in both mediums with the same character but find and discover new things about her.

Alison: I was going to ask because probably a lot of our audience in New York saw you. I saw you on the Broadway musical. A lot of our audience, I'm sure, did as well.

Danielle: Thank you.

Alison: What is something that you were able to? What's a concrete example of something that's just that much different about Sofia on film than the way you portrayed her on stage?

Danielle: For example, I'm in the famous scene, you told Harpo to beat me when Sofia comes to confront her for telling Harpo to beat her. When we go into the number of hell no, in the past, I had always played it as the objective is to put her in her place, to overstep my household. Then I realized it's actually not that. It's actually to teach her, to teach her how to say hell no, and to stand up for herself. That was really cool discovery for me because now I get to show a softer, even though Sofia still teaches her in a very bold way, but there's still a gentleness that I get to bring to teaching Celie how to move in the world that I did not see before.

That way that they can keep the sisterhood and it's not these two women who are against each other, but now are working together for this common goal of being strong Black women.

Alison: Blitz, you were born and raised in Ghana and The Color Purple is a classic American novel. What was your first exposure to the story?

Blitz: My first exposure to the story was Alice Walker's brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book. I read it as a teenager and it really was one of the first times I'd experienced the story that traversed both the continent of Africa and the diaspora. Nettie's exile to the continent really was-- I was a recent immigrant at the time, and I hadn't read much African-American literature that made an intentional connection. It really struck me. I think a lot of that was part of what attracted me to this opportunity was to really get to explore this yearning that is this separation of continental Africans and diaspora Africans specifically in the United States.

Alison: Blitz, this is a personal question. I'm going to Ghana in about three or four months. What's one thing I should do?

Danielle: Oh, nice.

Blitz: Oh, man, what's one thing? Oh gosh, there's so many things.

Alison: I have a week, but we only have 35 minutes for this interview, so I don't want to take it up with my travel itinerary.

Blitz: Sure. I really think one of must-dos in Ghana is to experience, if you can, one of the festivals, one of them called Homowo. Homowo is an incredible festival that really, if you're going to be in Accra that is, it's for the God people, and it precedes-- There's a number of days of silence that you get to honor the ancestors, and then people come out wearing their whites, and they really celebrate. The music is incredible, traditional music, dance, and food. That's a big one.

In a lot of ways, actually some of what we pulled into The Color Purple in terms of even color theory was based on some of this, like watching girls wear the white in the opening and how they come back with the white at the end. It was a bit of an homage to Homowo and that coming together. If you can do it, it'll be great.

Alison: Thank you. Blitz Bazawule is my guest. He's the director of The Color Purple. Daniel Brooks stars as Sofia. The Color Purple will be in theaters on December 25th. This is a true, true movie musical. It's got the big numbers, the dancing, the choreography, the great costuming. Danielle, you get to kick open a door in this musical, in your number. Share with us just so we can get a sense of the process of that moment, how it was filmed, your conversations with your director about that moment.

Danielle: That was so much fun because it felt like when you get to go back to theater and you get to do the work and have rehearsal, as we had with Blitz and [unintelligible 00:09:50] and you get to build the moment together and be together versus just going in and people telling you, stand here, move there, and do this, and speak like this, and hold the door like that, I really appreciate that. I think that's when you or when a project really does sing and magical is when it is collaborative and creative.

Blitz has always given us a space to do that, to collaborate together. When Blitz asked me, he said, "Danielle, I need you to come through this door." I told Blitz, I was like, "Okay, but I really think Sofia with burst door open with her foot." He was like, "Great, let's find a way to rig this door so that you can continue to do this for every take." That's what we discovered and now it's become a moment and such a cool moment, because again, it was birthed out of artists coming together and being open to one another's ideas.

I think that's what a great leader does is not always telling the things, how I want them done, which he did come in with such a great vision, but it's also about someone leading in a quiet tone in saying like, "I see you and I hear your ideas, and I'm going to allow you to bring those in the room." I just really appreciated working with Blitz because he really did allow all of us the opportunity to bring what we knew we could.

Alison: But you take a big swing of that so much of the story is grounded in a very textured reality, some difficult sequences, some difficult issues around violence, but then there's also these fantasy moments, these tremendous fantasy moments where we enter characters heads. How did you think about the balance between the two?

Danielle: Blitz, you want to answer?

Blitz: Yes, I was just jumping in to say, I really looked at it as the oscillation between joy and pain, and I think that's a quintessential human experience, where we are always turning our pain into power. I think it's something that can certainly be said for the African American experience. Looking at how much beauty has been bequeathed to the world, a lot of it born out of pain. Our job was really to always give Celie that opportunity, and I really, very early on, knew that we will be exploring Celie headspace and a lot of it was also to debunk this, what I call a falsehood, that people who have dealt with trauma and abuse are somehow docile, or passive, or waiting to be saved.

I really believe that that's not true, and people who have dealt with trauma and abuse are constantly trying to work out in their head, how to escape this trauma, how to heal from this trauma, how to love, who to love, how to forgive, these are all tenants that Celie really displays. I knew that having access to her headspace was going to give us the opportunity to also be expansive, anything she imagined she can have, including joy. That was really special and I think it's a unique way into seeing Celie that we haven't seen before.

Alison: I want to play a clip from The Color Purple. This is a clip of Sofia, where she is standing up to Mister who's your man's father, Harpo's father. Celie's nasty husband played by Colman Domingo. Sofia is coming to introduce herself now that she is very pregnant. The first voice you'll hear is Corey Henry and this is from The Color Purple.

Speaker 4: I will say introduce out to my girl. This is Sofia.

Speaker 5: A lot of a woman

Mister: [unintelligible 00:14:11] You seem like trouble.

Sofia: Oh, no, sir. I'm one of August's butlers daughters, no trouble at all, just big.

Mister: Who's your daddy?

Sofia: Apple.

Mister: I'm not going to let you marry my son because you were in a family way. Pity guy like you can take his mind, but you can't have his money.

Sofia: He ain't got no money. See, my sister and her husband say I can live with him as long as I please. Now, I come here out of respect, but if there ain't none to get, there sure ain't none to give. Don't keep me waiting.

Alison: Danielle, last time you were here to talk about Shakespeare in the Park, you haven't announced yet but you were pregnant?

Danielle: Oh, yes.

Alison: When I saw that scene, I thought about that, and I was thinking about how has being a mother and the mother of a daughter impacted the way you see the story?

Danielle: That's a beautiful question. Just getting to be their representation for her, number one, but in the story, I feel like it's what it's given me, reminding me that all the power that I need is within me. I can be the hero of my own, anything that I want to do, I don't have to necessarily wait for somebody to give me permission to do that thing. I feel like we find that with the character of Sofia. Also growing up as a dark-skinned, plus-size, curly hair, Southern woman, feeling very much like Celie, where the world tells you that you're ugly, and you're not worthy, and you're not beautiful, and you're not smart enough, we get to cancel that noise out.

I'm excited for her to get to understand that the things that make her unique, are really her superpower. That's what makes her really cool in this world, and that's what we discovered with Celie, but it's also watching someone discovering that through sisterhood. I'm excited for her to get all of the lessons that are embedded in this story, to watch it quadruple million times, and it still be a source of healing for her, especially now that we've added the music to it.

I just love that aspect because even if you don't have time to watch this movie in the full totality of it, you still have the music to hold on to when you need your healing, especially through songs, like I'm Here and Hell No.

Alison: You posted a video of your daughter seeing the trailer of The Color Purple. You took her to the Little Mermaid and it's so cute. She's in like full tiara and sparkles and it comes up. I just pulled a little bit of her reacting to you in the trailer. Let's roll that.

Fria: [babbles]

Alison: I can listen to that all day long.

Danielle: Oh, me, too. Absolutely.

Alison: At that moment, when you looked at your iPhone to film your daughter, what was going through your mind?

Danielle: I first didn't want to miss the moment. That was number one, because I knew it was only going to play once in this moment was only going to happen one time in this special way. Getting to see her eyes look up at Halle Bailey and see someone that looked like her in watching the movie but then also like watching the trailer getting to watch her mother up there with her in a tiara, which I purposely did because she is a queen and naming her Fria because I want her to always be reminded that she is free in this world.

It just was like, "What is happening?" My great grandmother would be over the moon right now to see this moment. If she was able to witness how far we've come as Black women, my God, that was so exciting. It's just that testament of what the power of representation can do is that's what it has been for me. Also, just for her to get to see the reflection of herself on that screen for the first time, the first time she watches a movie in a movie theater, it is The Color Purple. That is incredible. Well, she didn't watch The Color Purple, but the trailer of the The Color Purple. [chuckles]

Alison: We're discussing the film The Color Purple. It will be in theaters on December 25th. My guests are actor Danielle Brooks and director Blitz Bazawule, we'll have more after a real quick break. This is All Of It. This is all All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guests are the director of The Color Purple, Blitz Bazawule, and one of the actors who starred in the film Danielle Brooks. The Color Purple will hit theaters on December 25th. Blitz, this film looks beautiful, the landscape shots are beautiful. Where did you film? What were you looking for in a location?

Blitz: When I got hired, that was the very first thing I started to do was drive the length and breadth of Georgia, looking for spectacular locations. I really believe that location is character. I always begin with location because if I know the place, then I know who needs to be in the place. I know what they're supposed to be doing. I know how they're supposed to be dressed. I always begin there and I drove sometimes, seven hours a day just making sure that I was covering as much as I could. We ended up shooting a lot of our stage work in Atlanta and the surrounding areas.

When we shot a lot of our exteriors in Savannah, both of which are very specific to Alice Walker's intent. I also wanted to ground the film in ancestral land, Black land, and tribal land. Land that bore so much pain and really show up with reverence for that land. It was very important. There were some trees that really were haunting and really felt like, you know that things happened here, things that weren't savory, things that were painful. We all showed up with deep reverence for that space. And as much as we could, we prayed before we shot.

We did a lot of things to honor that land. I'm really, really glad that we were allowed to shoot in an environment that Alice Walker's brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book was kind of set this story in.

Alison: Blitz, a big part of director's job is making decisions and making choices, sometimes difficult ones. What was a really tough choice that you had to make that ended up working out? Maybe you weren't so sure it was going to-- [chuckles]

Blitz: Wow. I think one of the biggest gambles you take, especially when you're dealing with a story that is so known, so sacred, so important to many is how would expanding it work. Again, knowing how familiar the cannon is from the book to Steven Spielberg's movie to, of course, the play. I was really, really uncertain about these imaginative moments, one of which is Celie on this giant gramophone. You can hope that it'll work out conceptually. When you start shooting that scene, you're not quite sure what the entry point is and what the exit point.

Well, I knew what the exit point was, but I didn't know how I was going to actually get into Celie's mind. I was hopeful. When I watch the movie now and I see how seamless it is, I'm really reminded of the importance of courage as a director because you have to make these choices that are often, you only you can see it. As much as I try to storyboard, I'm a fastidious storyboard. I try my best to draw as much as possible to show my team and my partners what my intent is. For this film, I drew somewhere upwards of 1,300 frames for the film.

Even that, it's not enough, because those are still just static images. When you are on set and I also really love physical production design, I like for us to shoot in [unintelligible 00:24:06] in a way that the audience feels immersive, but also the actors believe it's happening. We actually built a massive giant gramophone and built the needle. The only thing that we added digitally was the horn of the gramophone, but everything was real. Taraji was really in a tub that was spinning. Fantasia was dancing around this giant gramophone.

Again, you never know until you actually see it in frame and you see it cut in before you go, "Oh my goodness. I'm so glad we were brave with the camera."

Alison: Yes, it's such a surreal moment. Danielle, what's a piece of direction that you got from Blitz over the course of the filming that really helped you shape your approach to Sophia's story arc? Because she goes on, it's an overused word, but she does go on a journey, an emotional journey for sure.

Danielle: I feel like there was so many moments. First of all, he's just an incredible director's visionary. He's got it. Anything he told me, I was down for the ride. Like, "Let's ride, let's do it." Like I'm down to play. I think more than anything, I just was impressed with his vision, the way in which he did the jail scene, going to the difference and shaping that, like is masterful. It is masterful because the time in this beautiful way. I just really love that about the way he worked and I just keep going back to the dinner scene in my head too, and really having to trust my director because a lot of times, let me say this first.

We shot the dinner scene over the course of five days, and during that time, a lot of people had unfortunately caught COVID. I was one of the people who did not catch COVID. We were trying to shoot around the people that could not actually be at the dinner scene, but what we discovered is that the power of that scene is in the unification of everybody being there, being present. Can you hear me okay?

Alison: Yes, you're good.

Danielle: Can you hear me okay? Okay. What I enjoyed was, I'm sorry, somebody called me and threw me all the way off. [chuckles] We were doing the dinner scene and-- oh, what I was going to say was I had to do that over the course of three days. Sometimes by myself and then finally the third time with the entire cast there. What I appreciated, because at the time, I didn't want to do it the third time, and maybe Blitz can explain this better than myself, but I didn't want to do it the third time.

Because, in the past, with other directors, sometimes they can take advantage of your work and your creativity and not understand what it takes to do those very dark, deep scenes and they will take advantage of that and they'll say, "Just keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it." They don't understand what it is doing for your mental space, your spiritual space, and your physical body. Knowing that, I was working with somebody who truly was taking care of me as an artist, make sure that my spirit was okay, like he spoke about, we prayed together, he would come in our dressing rooms, and talk to us on our down times to make sure we were okay.

He made sure our set, our crew was respectful of the things that were taking place because what we were doing was very deep and dark work. I just grateful for his leadership in that way, and it actually gave me a renewed faith and trust for hopefully the directors that I work within the future because I had cut off a part of myself being feeling like I had been taken advantage of when it comes to just do the singing over and over and over and over and over and over again but them not understanding what it takes for me to do that over and over again.

I'm grateful that like now my next projects, I can go in trusting that hopefully the director will take care of me the way that Blitz did when we shot Color Purple.

Alison: The Color Purple will be in theaters on December 25th. I've been speaking with actor Danielle Brooks and director Blitz Bazawule. Thank you so much for sharing your time and your creative work with us.

Blitz: Thank you for having us.

Danielle: Thank you.

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