Whoopi Goldberg has banned any unauthorized biopics about her life after she dies.
During a discussion about the controversial Marilyn Monroe movie Blonde on “The View” Tuesday (Dec. 6), Sunny Hostin mentioned that people would be eager to make a biographical film about Goldberg. “It sounds macabre, but I was speaking to Whoopi, and I was saying that she’s such a famous person that when she passes away, people are going to make films,” the co-host said.
In response, the Sister Act star revealed she has a clause in her will that prevents unsanctioned biopics from being made about her. “Actually they’re not. They’re not going to make films, because in my will it says, ‘Unless you speak to my family, try it.’ Try it,” the 67-year-old stated.
Blonde, which was directed by Andrew Dominik, debuted on Netflix in September. The film stars Ana de Armas as the late Marilyn Monroe and has received massive criticism since, including a review from Planned Parenthood stating that the movie allegedly contributed “to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy.”
Dominik recently addressed the backlash at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Saudi Arabia. He claimed that when it comes to icons, U.S. audiences only want to see a celebration. “Now we’re living in a time where it’s important to present women as empowered, and they want to reinvent Marilyn Monroe as an empowered woman. That’s what they want to see,” he said. “And if you’re not showing them that, it upsets them.”
The director also didn’t understand why he was being accused of exploiting the late actress‘ life. He added, “Which is kind of strange because she’s dead. The movie doesn’t make any difference in one way or another. What they really mean is that the film exploited their memory of her, their image of her, which is fair enough. But that’s the whole idea of the movie. It’s trying to take the iconography of her life and put it into service of something else, it’s trying to take things that you’re familiar with, and turning the meaning inside out. But that’s what they don’t want to see.”
Despite not wanting one for her own life, Goldberg recently produced and starred in an autobiographical movie about Emmett Till. The 14-year-old Black boy was brutally lynched in 1955 while visiting his cousins in Drew, Mississippi.