Nun for all and all for nun! Whoopi Goldberg concocted a plan to help her fellow actresses on the set of Sister Act after she believed they weren’t receiving fair treatment.
The View cohost, 64, opened up about the incident during an interview with Vulture on Thursday, October 29.
“The ladies hadn’t gotten everything I thought they should have gotten — the nuns,” Goldberg explained. “They were older women. They were women who I felt … should be able to go and have dinner and not be worried about paying hotels or whatever it was.”
The Ghost star said she wanted to be more “active” helping out her costars and created a “bit of a problem” when she conveniently got sick causing production to shut down for a couple of days.
Goldberg added that she “worked it out” for the actresses but denied going on strike for them. “I got sick,” she said. “I would never go on strike. But if my coughing and sneezing coincided with our brief problem, but they fixed it and it was great.”
The actress starred in the 1992 film Sister Act as Deloris Van Cartier, a lounge singer who joins a convent after being placed in a witness protection program. Goldberg reprised her role in Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit one year later.
The New York native reunited with her Sister Act costars Kathy Najimy (Sister Mary Patrick) and Wendy Makkena (Sister Mary Robert) on The View in 2017. During the episode, Goldberg revealed that Bette Midler was originally cast as Deloris.
“It was [her] movie and she couldn’t do it. She turned it down. They went through 100 million people and then got to me,” Goldberg joked at the time.
The Color Purple star explained to Vulture that Marc Shaiman — who wrote the musical arrangements for the film — helped train her for the musical component originally meant for Midler, 74.
“Marc Shaiman taught me how to sing,” she said. “He taught me what to do. And once we were able to establish that she was a one hit wonder and she had just gone this far and then all this happens and she’s working in the casinos, you know, it made it a lot easier to do. And then everyone was OK.”
Earlier this month, Goldberg teased that Sister Act 3 is in the works.
“For a long time, they kept saying no one wanted to see it,” she explained during an episode of The Late Late Show With James Corden. “And then quite recently, it turns out, that may not be true. People may want to see it. So, we’re working diligently to try to figure out how to get the gang together and come back.”
