Actors Colman Domingo and Corey Hawkins bring new energy to The Color Purple’s iconic father/son duo, Mister and Harpo, in Blitz Bazawule’s reimagining of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.
Mister, originally played by Danny Glover in Stephen Spielberg’s 1985 film adaption of The Color Purple, is one of the most complex and possible characters because of his treatment of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) in the film.
His son Harpo, initially played by Willard E. Pugh, wasn’t hated on the same level as his father but did get side eyes for his treatment of his wife Sofia (Oprah Winfrey) due to the misogyny and the worldview he inherited from his father, allowing it to affect his marriage.
Both Domingo and Hawkins wanted to take different approaches to the iconic characters, hoping that a new generation of viewers would see them differently after taking in Bazawule’s film.
CassiusLife spoke with both actors; see what they had to say below.
Colman Domingo Wants
Colman Domingo is no stranger to portraying complex characters that viewers will despise. In a testament to his acting skills, Domingo finds a way to find the nuance in characters who are, on paper, terrible people, and that continues to be the case with 2023’s version of Mister.
“I think the challenge, in the beginning, is to find all the things that I love about him, to really make him a full, honest character that lives in me,” Domingo told CassiusLife.
When you’re watching him, you can’t just villainize him. You have to… find ways to have empathy for the character…
He continues, “So I didn’t want to look at him as the way other people have seen him or women for years have seen Danny Glover. I wanted to take a look at him and examine him as somebody who had charisma and love and hope and dreams like everybody else and then put him in this place where it’s like, ‘What happens when those dreams are deferred, and he put his foot on someone else’s…
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