Whoopi Goldberg had some choice words about View this morning for a critic who commented on his appearance in UntilChinonye Chukwu’s true story film about the 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmitt Till in Mississippi for whistling a white woman.
The film, which just premiered at the New York Film Festival, chronicles Grandma Till Mobley’s extraordinary efforts to seek justice after the death of her son. Goldberg plays Alma, the young boy’s grandmother. A review of the film referred to his “distractingly” big suit – except Goldberg, who also produced the film, didn’t wear one.
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“I don’t care how you felt about the movie,” Goldberg said This Morning. “But you should know it wasn’t a big suit, it was me. It was me. It was steroids. Remember last year? I guess you don’t watch the show, or you would know it wasn’t a big suit. It’s okay not to be a movie fan, but you want to leave people out. Just a comment on the acting. And if you have a question, ask someone. I’m sure you didn’t mean to be humiliating.
Goldberg, who did not name the critic or the magazine, missed several weeks of View in 2019, after suffering from pneumonia.
Barbara Broccoli, who produced the film with Goldberg, Keith Beauchamp, Thomas Levine, Michael Reilly and Fred Zollo, told Deadline “This is an important film for me, for all of us.” Emmett, who was visiting his cousins, was lynched and murdered for whistling a young woman at Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in Money, Mississippi. After a group of men dragged the boy from his uncle’s house, his mutilated body was discovered in the Tallahatchie River.
The film, based on footage of MGM’s Orion, will be released in theaters on October 14 by UAR.