Taraji P. Henson put The Color Purple’s production team on blast for giving her a rental car to get to and from the movie set while filming in Atlanta.
The Empire actress is doubling down on the discourse around income disparity and subpar, workplace treatment that Black women in Hollywood have to navigate just to do their work.
According to a recent interview with New York Times, Henson shared her experience and frustration on how the movie’s production basically played in her face and inadvertently slapped other cast members, some of whom are also Black women, including Danielle Brooks and Fantasia Barino.
“They gave us rental cars, and I was like, ‘I can’t drive myself to set in Atlanta’” Henson said.
“This is insurance liability, it’s dangerous. Now they robbing people. What do I look like, taking myself to work by myself in a rental car?”
She continued: “So I was like, ‘Can I get a driver or security to take me?’ I’m not asking for the moon. They’re like, ‘Well, if we do it for you, we got to do it for everybody.’”
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Requiring an A-list actress to commute herself to work—in the city of Atlanta where carjackings are prominent, and motorists are more prone to get into a wreck than anywhere else in the country—is hella wild. The ask pulls the curtain back on the industry’s audacity to disqualify Black women’s value and workplace safety.
In 1935, Zora Neale Hurston wrote: “[D]e sister in black works harder than anybody else in de world” and 84 years later, we cannot find the lie, particularly as Black women still get paid 36 percent less than white men. Despite sharing she’s “tired of fighting” in that tearful interview with Gayle King—Henson put that work in for her fellow, Black actresses while filming the remake of The Color Purple.
There was “stuff on that set, they got because I fought.” Henson said.
Danielle Brooks confirmed Henson’s benevolence during a junket that was posted on Instagram by TheNeighborTalk. Brooks shared that the award-winning actress was their “voice” and spoke up for them when they didn’t have their own dressing rooms and food on the set.
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Henson, who reprised the role of Shug Avery has been making the rounds and doing publicity since the film’s release—all the while keeping the conversation fresh and exposing Hollywood’s egregious practices when it comes to Black women.
Oprah Winfrey announced that she and Henson aka “Cookie Lyons. Katherine Johnson. Yvette. and now Shug Avery” would be having a sit down conversation on OWN on Saturday, Jan. 6 at 10PM.
Aunties, Y’all watching?
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