8 Actors Who Quit Movies Because Of Seconds Of Footage
3. Patti LaBelle Didn't Want To Kiss A Woman - The Color Purple
Margaret Avery received a well-earned Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her performance as Celie's (Whoopi Goldberg) love interest Shug in The Color Purple, a part that was nevertheless originally offered to singer-actress Patti LaBelle.
LaBelle balked because of a single scene where Shug kisses Celie, the actress telling Spielberg that, despite the moment lasting mere seconds of the film's 153-minute runtime, she wasn't comfortable kissing a woman.
LaBelle later expressed regret that she didn't take the part "because it was just acting," though ironically Spielberg was himself criticised for drastically toning-down the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug - which is treated far more graphically in Alice Walker's source novel - for the sake of a PG-13 rating.
It's a charge the director himself fully admits to:
"There were certain things in the [lesbian] relationship between Shug Avery and Celie that were finely detailed in Alice's book, that I didn't feel could get a [PG-13] rating. And I was shy about it. In that sense, perhaps I was the wrong director to acquit some of the more sexually honest encounters between Shug and Celie, because I did soften those. I basically took something that was extremely erotic and very intentional, and I reduced it to a simple kiss. I got a lot of criticism for that."