“I ended up having to do that scene over the course of two days, several hours a day, and it took a toll on my back,” the actress recalled.
Danielle Brooks talks about how she needed physical therapy after filming a scene in the Purple.
The actress — who was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance as Sofia in the 2015 Broadway revival of the musical — reprized her role in the big-screen adaptation and admitted to IndieWire that filming Sofia’s arrest scene “really took a toll” on her body.
In the film, Sofia is attacked, beaten and later arrested by a group of men after she refuses to work as a maid for a racist housewife.
“I ended up having to do that scene over the course of two days, multiple hours a day, and it took a toll on my back,” Brooks, 34, told the news outlet. “Swinging back and forth trying to get the mob off of me.”
She continued: “Of course, we have an amazing stage manager [stunt coordinator Mark Hicks] and his crew were amazing, but doing it over and over again really got me out, where I had to do physical therapy and go to a chiropractor for a few weeks to recover while I still had to work.”
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Danielle Brooks as Sofia in ‘The Color Purple’.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Danielle Brooks ‘Had to Work Hard’ to Land Role in ‘Color Purple’ Despite Broadway Role
Brooks explained that the arrest scene is portrayed much differently in the film compared to the Broadway adaptation, where Sophia’s attack is not physically enacted.
“When we did the mob scene on Broadway, you don’t even see it. You just see me come down to the center of the stage and fall to my knees, and then you will see that I have raised my head and now I have transformed into a new version, the oppressed Sophia stolen by the spirit, which I can endure for some time of the year,” she said. “But that’s a lot different [it for real]and having 10 to 15 guys surrounding you and you want to put everything into it because you want it to make sense from every angle, so you don’t feel like you called it on the phone.”
“I pride myself on being a physical actor,” Brooks explained. “I live there. I love discovering how I can use my whole body for a character. I just want to take advantage of everything I can.”
With a role that was so difficult and physically demanding, Orange is the new black the alum told the magazine that she feels that training at Juilliard helped her recover and feel like herself after the shoot.
“I wrote in my journal at the end, I was like, ‘After 70-plus days of playing Sofia, I’m completely exhausted.’ I was so exhausted,” Brooks recalled.
“I thank Juilliard for teaching us how to get out of character, how not to always go to the darkest places inside, to know when you go there, that there is a way to get out that you don’t have to stay there, she said. “Every actor finds his own way. And again, my people immediately take off that wig, put that hot towel on their face, take off their clothes, put on overalls and my Dr. That helps me.”
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Source: HIS Education