Fans havae been pouring into theaters to watch Danielle Brooks’ rendition of the character Sofia in The Color Purple musical film. Now Brooks is sharing that playing the role impacted her physcial health at one point during filming.
In a conversation with IndieWire, she explained that when she was filming a scene where Sofia got arrested, her body caught the short end of the stick.
“Because I ended up having to do that scene over the course of two days for multiple hours a day, and it pulled my back out,” she expalined.
“Swinging back and forth trying to get the mob off of me. Of course, we have an incredible stage combat leader [stunt coordinator Mark Hicks] and his crew were fabulous, but doing it over and over, that really took me out, where I had to do physical therapy and go to the chiropractor for a few weeks to recover while still having to work.”
Brooks went on to explain that although she played this same role in the Broadway version, portraying that scene was a bit different.
“So when we did the mob scene on Broadway, you don’t even see it,” she explained. “You just see me come down center stage and fall to my knees, and then you’ll see I lift my head up and now I’ve transformed into a new version, a downtrodden, spirit-stolen Sofia, which I can sustain for a year. But it’s much different doing [it for real], and having 10 to 15 guys surrounding you and you wanting to put everything in it because you want it to make sense from every angle, to not feel like you phoned it in. … I pride myself on being a physical actor. That’s where I live. I love finding how I can use all of my body for the character. I just want to use everything that I can.”