Fantasia Barrino talks about ‘The Color Purple’ and the suicide attempt

Fantasia Barrino He’s opening up about getting through darker times and almost took his own life.

Barrino, who reprises her role as Celie in the Oprah Winfrey-produced big-screen musical adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel “The color Purple,” said Variety that although he never thought he would be, he is “very HAPPY, in capital letters.”

After being crowned the winner After the third season of “American Idol” in 2004, Barrino told the trade outlet, he rushed to hug his grandmother, who told him to buckle up, “because with all this comes the storm.”

In 2008, after finishing her career playing Celie in “The Color Purple” on Broadway, the singer visited a church in Los Angeles, where Bishop George Bloomer warned him that years of pain awaited him. If she held on and managed to move forward, she told him, his end would be better than his beginning.

Just two years later, amid a battle with depression and intense public scrutiny, Barrino tried to take his life taking sleeping pills and aspirin.

“I just wanted the noise to stop,” he told Variety. At the time, she had been financially supporting her family, she was embroiled in a nasty legal battle with her father over her portrayal in her memoir, and her house was in foreclosure. At the North Carolina hospital where she woke up with tubes down her throat, a nurse held up magazines with her face on the covers and said, “Do you see that young woman? She is strong. She is a blessing. Don’t come back here again. You fight.”

“I walked out of that hospital and said, ‘I’ll never do that again, because I have a purpose,’” the singer and actor told Variety. “I’m going to speak into the lives of every young person and tell them, ‘Don’t you dare give up.’

“I don’t care if things get ugly again,” he continued. “I don’t care if there are storms. I realized that I have the spirit of an eagle… They fly over the storms.”

In 2016, Barrino he told the Times that the cover of your album “The definition of …” was inspired by all the abuse she had suffered in her life and being able to finally face what she had always run from: herself.

“I feel like any woman. I’ve been through a little bit of everything,” she told The Times. “I am the definition of strength.”

“It’s difficult for women… [especially] in the industry. “If you look at some of the big ones, they either couldn’t maintain a good relationship or they were in an abusive relationship,” he continued. “It was almost like the man was trying to get that spark out of them. I went through a lot of that. They have spat on me. I’ve had a black eye. “I have simplified myself to try to make a relationship work.”

When Oprah first approached Barrino to play Celie again, the “American Idol” winner turned her down. Playing Celie in eight shows a week on Broadway had been traumatic for her. Celie’s struggle with abuse, pain, and adversity had mirrored his own in ways that became increasingly burdensome. She swore that she would never play the role again.

But director Blitz Bazawule finally convinced her and explained his twist on the story. He appreciated that an on-screen representation of Celie could present the character’s internal monologue in a way that a theatrical representation could not.

“You can see how he overcame some of these things,” Barrino said. This time around, the Grammy winner said playing Celie was a chance to confront her past, rather than run away from it.