Like two naughty schoolchildren, the phone conversation between my friend and I as to what questions I should ask Whoopi Goldberg has deteriorated into quotes from her movie Sister Act.
As I’m sat in the London Palladium – with the smell of fish and chips wafting through the theatre – waiting for the American actress/comedian/presenter to arrive, my giggling at our rendition of The Lounge Medley is cut short with the words: “shit, she’s here”.
There’s no fanfare, no legion of fawning assistants and it turns out the fish and chips are for her. The next four interviews she conducts are all done while the 55-year-old View “moderator” picks at her British delicacy, her packet of Marlboro reds to the left of the plate.
Not quite as Hollywood as you might expect.
In town for a mere handful of days (and overcoming a long-standing fear of flying in the process), Goldberg is here to promote the stage musical of the film – which she’s producing – that had just moments ago been bringing my friend and I such joy.
So it’s fair to mention that Sister Act – the movie – is not without it’s gay following.
Well, I mention it after Goldberg has sent back her chips. “These are new,” she tells her PR. “These aren’t from the same place.” She shakes her head and says, in the same quiet tone that she always seems to speak in. “Not good.”
Looking over her familiar oval glasses there’s a glean in her eye and a large smile spreads across her face. “I never drink soda but I’m so excited,” she tells me as she orders a cola before answering my original question.
“I never think about it. It just is. Sister Act just is. I’ve always had a large gay following so I figure people that like what I do will come and see what I do.”
Changing the conversation, for what won’t be the last time as we have our chat, she steers things back to the stage version.
“This is going to be interesting because it’s not the music, it’s not me, but they’ve made it work and it’s terrific. The music is disco – which I love – and the girl has a voice,” Goldberg gasps. “Patina [Miller, who plays Goldberg’s role] sings her ass off. And it’s fantastic. And the nuns are the nuns, you know. So you’ll get what you’re looking for, you just won’t see me. And you won’t hear My Guy. But should you be interested in using the music for your church group you can still do it, as it turns out,” she ponders.
Singing and voice are two talents that Goldberg jokes about not having had during her time on the two original nun fun romps.
“When they put [the film] together it wasn’t put together for me, it was for Bette Midler. And that’s a voice. So they had to rewrite it for me to take it out of where she was and that’s why they made it a bad lounge singer who had one hit by mistake. And now we’ve been able to change it so she’s not on the backside of her career anymore, she’s at the beginning. She’s moving forward and then of course her boyfriend kills the man, she has to go and hide with the nuns, life changes for her.”
Goldberg thinks on when asked if she could see the role working with Midler.
“She would have done it differently, I’m sure, it would have been funny. But it was the pendulum swing for me, so I’m very pleased. And I’ve paid her back.”
Gullibly, I ask how.
“I’m kidding,” she deadpans.
“If they’re coming to look for the film they shouldn’t do that.
“If it didn’t bother you that I wasn’t in The Color Purple…” she laughs, referring – again, not for the last time – to the fact that this isn’t the first of her movies to make it to the stage.
“I had heard a rumour that it was going to be done for the stage and I said [makes pissed off noise] ‘first it’s the Color Purple, now it’s Sister Act, what the hell’s going on’. But then as time went on and I began to hear more and more music, I was like ‘hey, this might be pretty damn good’. And so I’m really kind of excited.”
She says that revisiting the project 17 years on was never originally on the cards.
“After Mary Wicks passed away I thought ‘that’s it, we can never do it again. There’s no way, ‘cos I’m not doing it without those nuns’. But I know that story will work no matter what you do to it, as long as you have great songs to transition, you have no issue. Because it’s fun, it’s silly. It doesn’t require you to have a masters degree to understand what it’s about. It’s just fun.”
Fun is what also attracted Goldberg to producing another stage musical, the equally camp Thoroughly Modern Millie. She agrees that it also has a camp sensibility and that she’s attracted to such projects.
“I am because they’re fun. When I was a kid my mom took me to see the movie and Beatrice Lillie – I’d never seen her before. When she got in that elevator and had to dance, I thought ‘I love this, I love this!’ You know, Mary Tyler Moore with her original face. It’s just fun. I really love fun. I want to make things that are fun for people, there’s enough crap in the world. I’d like to contribute something that’s light and airy and makes you smile until you get to your door. Maybe even after you go in.”
Speaking of contributions that make you smile (no, she’s not offering me a chip) two guest appearances spring to mind…
“A show with the same sensibility,” she notes with a low laugh when Absolutely Fabulous is brought up. “I. Loved. It. I was a huge fan of the show. I don’t know how they found out that I loved it, I was crazy for it but they did and a call came in, they said ‘we’re going to be shooting in the States, [for the episode Gay] you wanna do a little piece on it?’ I said ‘yes I do!’” she laughs. “‘Yes I do!’ Because those women, the actresses – Joanna Lumley – fantastic and ridiculously talented. When you can be around people who have that much talent it just makes you better. It makes you look better anyway, it makes you look like you actually know what you’re doing.”
But this doesn’t rank up there as the best of long and varied career, oh no.
“Mad Magazine and Star Trek are the two best things for me. I was on the back cover of Mad Magazine where you had to close it up like an accordion,” she says, demonstrating the action, chip in hand.
“There are certain things from my childhood that make me happy, and continuing the idea that there would be black people in the future made me happy, with Star Trek.”
Goldberg appeared in five series and two movies of Star Trek: The Next Generation as the mysterious alien bartender Guinan.
“Because before Star Trek, if you watched any science-fiction there were no black people. But then Nichelle Nichols came and was like ‘yes, we’re here’, I was like ‘I wanna do that!’, so I did.”
She pauses for a not insignificant time when asked about revisiting this particular role. “It may happen. Not the new movie, not the one after but the one after that. We sort of kicked it around a little bit to see. Because my character Guinan has lived in so many different times I can show up anywhere, so it’s really cool. Fingers crossed.”
But back from the far reaches of space and down to the West End with a bang. Or maybe even a thump – the cast of the other big new musical – Priscialla: Queen of the Desert – having recently voiced their jealousy at Sister Act getting the bigger stage.
She laughs deeply when asked who would win in a face-off between the nuns and the drag queens.
“Definitely the drag queens. Definitely. If you can run around the stage in heels and a five-foot wig you can do anything. See, those girls are in flats!”
Speaking of fights, Goldberg’s been involved with one of America’s biggest recently – the California ban on gay marriage.
“Really the best thing we can do now is wait and see what happens. I think a lot of people got their eyes opened, a lot of people voted for something that they thought was one thing and turned out to be something else. I don’t think a lot of people understood why it was important because most straight people never have to think about the list of things that come along with being married. And if you’re just in a civil union you’re not entitled to ‘em.
“I’m hoping that it will turn around and go back to where it was, which was ‘yes of course gay people should get married’. Anybody should be able to get married. Not a cow and a duck – that’s too much,” she jokes.
“If that’s where your heart is and you wanna get married. My big poster is: If you don’t like gay marriage, don’t marry a gay person.”
Which brings us neatly onto another debate. I’ve literally got time to ask one question. One burning question that’s hotter than the potato used to make Goldberg’s lunch.
Recently on the View one of her co-moderators commented that Goldberg was about to come out of the closet, live on air. Goldberg brushed it off by saying: “That door’s been open for years.”
Is she? Isn’t she?
“Well comics, you know, if you’re a fast comic, you know that that would be the capper on what she said,” she chuckles. “So I capped her.
“People have always wondered, and even when I say ‘no, I’m straight, I’ve always been straight, love men,’ people go ‘but no, are you gay?’”
She agrees that there are people that just don’t want to hear that.
“I am not gay,” she says slowly, just as the PR very timely wraps up our interview. “But I think everybody’s gay. Pretty much.”
Back in the habit
Sister Act: The Musical is at The London Palladium. For details see sisteractthemusical.com.