The Color Purple the Musical: A Celebration in Film

How I Got to Audition, Be Cast and Work on the Film

It was late in 2021, when my agent called to tell me that I had an audition for The Color Purple the Musical which would be filming in Atlanta, GA later that year. It was a non-singing part, and the audition would be by self-tape. The practice of the self-tape started in the late 2000’s but when the Pandemic arrived it became the only way to audition for a while and is now the preferred way of casting directors to audition for Film and TV.

Short video of the Premiere night of The Color Purple the Musical

A self-tape is when an actor in the privacy of your own home or in a professional studio prepares an audition with the material that the filmmakers have sent you whether that’s a monologue or a scene or a song. You film either with a digital camera or phone, edit it, making it look as professional as you can and then send it into the casting director. The part I was asked to audition for was the mayor. It is when the mayor’s wife asks the character Sofia, the strong-willed independent thinking black woman to be her maid, and Sofia turns her down. The mayor’s wife gets very upset, calling Sofia a derogatory name, and Sofia insults her back. In the time and place of The Color Purple, a black woman in the South was not allowed to speak to a white woman in that manner or with that tone of voice. The mayor overhears this conversation, and he comes over and slaps Sofia. Sofia turns around and decks him with a punch that knocks him out. She is then surrounded by white men, beaten, and hauled off to jail.

My self-tape was basically a monologue, so I pretended that I yelled at Sofie and slapped her. It was only me there when I did the audition. I did not slap anyone – it was all pretend. I filmed it with my phone, edited it and sent it off to the casting director. I then forgot about it because that is how you have to approach self-tapes. You get no feedback on how you did as opposed to before in the pre-Pandemic days where you often went in for an in-person audition. I did not hear anything for a long time and really had forgotten I had even done the audition when weeks later I got a call from my agent saying that I had been cast in The Color Purple in the part of the Deputy. A part that I had not even auditioned for, and I was extremely excited. To be cast in a big screen movie being produced by Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg was very exciting.

From the time that I was cast to the time that I was going to actually appear on set and film my part was going to be several months, and the money they were offering for me to be in the movie was extremely low. I had just moved from Los Angeles, and I put the difference in union film pay down to the fact I was in Georgia, a right-to-work state. On a few occasions I actually told my agent that I would probably pass on the part. There had been a big miscommunication between my agent and myself on what they were going to pay me. I thought the film was going to pay me a very small fee since it was just a few lines, when in actuality they were paying me a couple of thousand dollars. When I told my agent that I was probably going to take a vacation and go overseas, she became very upset with me. That’s how we discovered the misunderstanding, and of course, I stayed.

On Thursday, July 30^th, 2022, I show up at the set of The Color Purple which was filming at Blackhall Studios in the Atlanta area. Now my contract called for that I would have a trailer with a dressing room which is pretty normal for a major motion picture when you have a speaking part. Yet, according to the script, I only had a few lines so I was thinking it would not be very elaborate. I had not seen the script since that was being kept a secret. I knew what scene I was working in, but I didn’t know how they were going to shoot it.

When I got to set, I checked in with the production manager. I was then taken to my trailer by a production assistant. When I walked inside the trailer, I found I had a couch, a television, refrigerator, and a radiant heat fireplace plus my own private bathroom.  So for a small part, it was the height of luxury. A few minutes after I had gotten into my trailer there was a knock on my door.  I opened it to find a young woman of about 24 who said that she was my personal production assistant for the day. I’ve been working in films for 40 years, most of them pretty low budget. I’ve never had my own personal production assistant and I really wasn’t sure exactly what she was supposed to do. Turned out she was to get my food, walk me to and from the set and make sure that I had anything that I needed. In general, just take care of me.

Director Blitz Bawazula

After we’ve been introduced to each other and she explained that she would come get me when it was time for me to go to makeup and hair, she left and I’m sitting in my trailer trying to get used to the fact that I have my own trailer and a personal production assistant. All of a sudden, I heard someone playing some really good Blues guitar. I walked out of my trailer and went down a couple of trailers where I saw a very nice looking African American man wearing a really cool hat. He was sitting outside a trailer with an acoustic guitar with a pickup playing some wonderful blues through a really small little amp next to him. The woman who was my personal assistant was listening to him. I had no idea who he was. I thought perhaps he was the music coordinator for the film. I asked him that and he went “Yeah, I’m something like that” as he continued to play. My production assistant laughed and says, “Yeah he’s really important and he’s really good.” Then she left and I listened to him for another few minutes and then I returned to my trailer.

Author as The Deputy

Time passes slowly on a movie set. You either stay in your trailer and read or watch TV, or you walk around like I did and talk to the crew. Eventually my assistant brought me my costume and took me to Makeup and Hair. After that I got dressed in my costume and was taken onto the set where I was introduced to the director, who turned out to be the man playing the blues guitar. His name was Blitz Bawazula, a Ghanaian filmmaker, author, visual artist, rapper, singer-songwriter, and record producer who had worked with Beyonce’ among others. The scene we were shooting that day featured Fantasia Barrino who was playing Celia and Danielle Brooks who was playing Sofia and myself. The scene had a large jail cell set like a cellblock in a prison. It was enclosed on all sides and had a full roof. The cinematographer was Dan Laustsen, a Danish cinematographer best known for Crimson Peak (2015), John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) and The Shape of Water (2017) for which he received an Academy Award nomination. By now I was feeling fairly intimidated by all this big-name talent and the general tone of the set. The set was very professional and friendly but there seemed to be a little tension in the air. So, I just stood back out of the way, and didn’t think I was going to have much interaction with the director.

Fantasia Barrino and the Author

Blitz walked us through the blocking mostly talking to Fantasia and Danielle, and he went back to the video village which is where the director and the producers watch through monitors what is being filmed on set. We did a quick run-through of the blocking and Blitz came over to give some direction to Fantasia and Danielle. Then he turned to me and said, “I need to give you more lines.” Which of course as an actor, I was very happy about. He said on the next run-through he would tell me where to add these extra lines.

So began this wonderful day where I soon realized that I was not going to ever have my face on the screen, but they were going to shoot me from every possible angle. The idea being that when Celia comes to visit Sofia and it’s time for her to go, I come in and order her to leave. She’s very slow to get up so I threatened to beat her with a night stick. I never say that, but you can see the night stick in my hand. I am always in shadow. I’m always backlit or shot from the side but my face is always in shadow. We would shoot it one way and then they would shoot it from another side. Because the set was an enclosed cell when they wanted to shoot from a different direction, they literally took a wall out so that they could get the cameras set and the lighting correct. Then they would put the wall back in and shoot us from another angle. They shot me from behind, they shot me from the side, they shot me from the far end of the cell near where Sofia is sitting and then they also shot me in close up as Celia leaves the cell and I closed the door behind her.

When I arrived on set, I didn’t know who the director was. That information had not been given to me so I found Blitz to be very friendly and very interested in anything that I had to say concerning the character or how I should deliver lines. He was very respectful even though I had a very small part. One of the things that particularly impressed me in that I had never seen on a movie set before was while he was directing our scene in between setups or getting ready for the scene to restart, he was also editing the movie at the same time. Not our particular scene but I watched him edit the musical number that Fantasia/Celia sings after she leaves the jail. It had already been shot and he was giving preliminary editing notes to an assistant editor who was on the set with him. Maybe all major motion pictures do this at this point, but this was the first time I had ever seen it on a movie set. Editing while simultaneously you are shooting another scene. To be able to keep those two jobs going simultaneously was incredibly impressive.

I didn’t really get to spend or get to know the woman who was playing Sofia that much because Danielle Brooks was at the other end of the cell behind bars and when we took a break she went back to her trailer or dealt with her personal entourage. Because Fantasia and I were on the other side of the prison bars and we had dialogue with each other, over the next six hours I got over my intimidation not of her personally but of the scope of the project. We actually had some laughs and at the end she took a bunch of photographs with me which I thought was very nice. As is the custom on a movie set when an actor who has a speaking part leaves the set, the assistant director called out, “And that’s a wrap for James Carey.”

More than a year later in December of 2023, I found an e-mail on my computer inviting me to a cast and crew screening of The Color Purple at the Tara Theatre in Atlanta. The movie was finally ready and was to open nationwide on Christmas Day. I was very excited to see the film. I had no idea what it looked like. The film had been kept on wraps for almost an entire year and Oprah had the studio doing a series of targeted screenings to groups around the country in order to build word of mouth.

My partner, Lainie Smith and I showed up at the theater that night, and there were two screenings going on simultaneously. In one theater was the screening for all the bigwigs and important guests, while in the other were all the crew and cast who did not have major parts like me with their friends and families to watch the film. Of course, I’ve seen Steven Spielberg’s version from 1985, which was a magnificent film that helped make the careers of Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey as actresses, but this version was a revelation. The acting of all the main actors especially Fantasia and Danielle who played Celia and Sofia and Celia’s abusive husband Mister, played by Colman Domingo were amazing.

Lou Gossett played Mister’s father and even though he was almost confined to a wheelchair, it was wonderful to see the Academy Award-winning actor who is now in his 80’s on screen and hold his own with everybody else. He also gave a touching speech at the screening, welcoming us and saying he believed this was a wonderful and unforgettable movie. He was absolutely right.

The dance numbers, the music which comes from the Broadway musical, The Color Purple, and the cinematography are all excellent. The message of the show and how it’s delivered is life affirming. It’s a positive message and while the subject matter at times is incredibly dark, Fantasia’s performance as we watch Celia go from an ignored abused little girl to a successful businesswoman who is finally in control of her own future is really marvelous. The editing is superb.

I cannot recommend The Color Purple the Musical enough. It is a moving, touching, warm hearted time in a movie theater. Just make sure you bring a box of tissues because you’ll definitely cry. It was really a privilege to be part of this excellent and moving film. I hope you enjoy it and wish all of you a happy 2024.

https://linktr.ee/jamesrcarey – LinkTree Site

http://www.jamesrcarey.com – Personal Site

https://pro.imdb.com/name/nm2230605 – Professional Site

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9C0KPdL3tN1Q00FIz_m-zQ – My Film Page

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All photos and short film are by James Carey, Rights Reserved (Expect picture of Blitz Bazawala and picture of Dollar Bills.

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