‘The Color Purple’ solid tops NAACP Image Awards

While “The Color Purple” actor Danielle Brooks did not take house the Oscar for finest supporting actress on the Oscars final weekend, she and solid members took house the NAACP Image award on Saturday for excellent movement image.

On the crimson carpet, Brooks advised Reuters that out of all her accolades, she’s most grateful to the NAACP awards for acknowledging The Color Purple group with a number of nominations.

“If nobody gonna see us, I’m glad that our people see us,” she stated, referencing the movie’s lack of nominations all through the 2024 awards season.

While Hollywood has made progress on diversifying expertise and storytelling because the 2015 outcry of #OscarsSoWhite – when all 20 performing nominations went to white actors – the tempo of change nonetheless has not leveled the enjoying subject for some.

Most just lately, indigenous actor Lily Gladstone misplaced to Emma Stone for the very best actress Oscar regardless of Gladstone being the awards frontrunner, having gained the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award for her function in Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Image Awards organised by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) are thought of the highest leisure honours targeted on Black actors.

Brooks wasn’t the one one relishing the celebrations. Fellow solid members Fantasia Barrino and Taraji P. Henson additionally took house awards.

Barrino took house excellent actress and Henson gained excellent supporting actress for his or her roles within the musical adaptation of the 1985 movie.

These historic wins come after the unique 1985 adaptation of the Alice Walker novel was met with controversy by many Black-led organisations, together with the NAACP.

For many throughout the Hollywood department of the Black civil rights organisation, Steven Spielberg’s film adaptation of The Color Purple was seen as degrading to Black males.

The movie follows the story of two Black American teenage sisters, Celie and Nettie, within the American South throughout the early 1900s.

Celie embarks on a journey to search out her freedom and should overcome years of abuse, after she and Nettie are separated by the boys of their lives.

The unique movie starring Whoopi Goldberg gained eleven Oscar nominations, however it didn’t win a single one.

Similarly, the 2023 musical adaptation directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Blitz Bazawule did not have any main solid members take house Hollywood’s greatest prize.

Other Image winners embody poet and activist Amanda Gorman, who gained the chairman award; R&B singer Usher, who gained the entertainer of the 12 months award; and Rustin actor Colman Domingo, who gained the excellent actor award.

For many Black actors, this 12 months’s nominations served as inspiration for their very own careers to flourish.

As Ghosts actor Danielle Pinnock advised Reuters: “We would not be able to play all these roles without all the people that paved the way for us, you know?”