Three years ago, Phylicia Pearl Mpasi was making YouTube videos in her mother’s basement. Now, she’s making her film debut as young Celie in “The Color Purple."
Though none of the videos went viral, she credits them for helping make dreams happen after years of rejections. “100%,” Mpasi tells TODAY.com over a Zoom call. “The second I just do what I want, what feels good for me, doors unlocked.”
Though maybe “The Color Purple” wasn’t a door; it was destiny. Below, the 30-year-old actor opens up about how she landed the role — and what it did to, and for, her.
The long road to Celie
Mpasi says people always told her she should play the main character in Alice Walker’s novel-turned-movie-and-musical, who endures the unimaginable as a Black woman in the Jim Crow South. Her journey toward self-actualization and the line, “I am here,” has made readers and audiences cheer and cry for decades.
“The truth is, I was told for a lot of my life I look like Fantasia Barrino,” Mpasi says of the former American Idol singer who originated the 2005 role on Broadway, and reprised her role in the current film adaptation. “I’m sure the second she stepped on Broadway people were like, ‘Oh, you want to do theater? You should do that role because you look like her.’”
And Mpasi tried to play Celie — over and over again. She auditioned for the 2017 it opened in 2015 Broadway revival (Cynthia Erivo got the part). She auditioned again; didn’t get it. When the touring production was auditioning, she didn’t book that either.
But she did book a role in "The Lion King," which she performed on Broadway and on tour for five years. When the show was shut down during the pandemic, Mpasi felt stalled but not defeated. If anything, being stuck at home made her want to be an artist more, a calling she’s felt since performing in the church choir as a girl.
"There’s something performative about that. I always felt people looking at me,” she says.
She wrote down on a piece of paper that she was “going to be in a movie musical by the end of this year," adding she didn't know "The Color Purple" was slated to become a movie musical at the time.
A year later, in 2021, her grandmother passed away and she was traveling to the Democratic Republic of the Congo for her funeral. “I kid you not — I heard a voice in my head that said, 'Google "The Color Purple" auditions.' So I Googled them and saw an open call on a website called Actors Access and submitted.”
She was called back for Celie and asked to sing “I’m Here” and read a few scenes. The only problem? Mpasi lost her voice after traveling — but she came up with a clever solution.
“No one knows that I did this,” she says. "I lip-synced to the camera, then recorded myself separately and edited the two together to be a perfect self-tape."
All the YouTube videos created during the pandemic paid off: Mpasi was more comfortable speaking to the camera, and could edit the video.
“I would sing one line and then do tea and lozenges. Then sing another line and then tea and lozenges and just pieced it together. I’m so thankful I had that experience and was able to do that," she says.
It might have been the perfect audition tape to Mpasi, but Celie still wasn’t in the cards.
“They still said no. They were like, ‘She’s still not right. She’s reading a little too young for the role of Celie.’ I was like, ‘Who are you gonna get?’ They got Fantasia Barrino. So I was like, 'OK, OK, I understand.’"
Meanwhile, Mpasi got a job in the writers' room for the Paramount+ show, "Rise of the Pink Ladies," a "Grease" prequel, and thought she had found a new calling: TV writing.
Then, in December 2021, casting called again, asking for Mpasi to do a chemistry read with Halle Bailey, cast as young Nettie in "The Color Purple."
“She just finished filming 'The Little Mermaid,' so she was fresh off that. I came in fresh out of nowhere, just from my mom’s basement,” Mpasi jokes. The two bonded quickly. Soon after, the role was finally hers — at last.
“My agent called me and was like, ‘You got the part. You’re the choice. Oprah and Steven Spielberg have all signed off on you!”
Playing Celie: ‘Mentally I could separate, but my body couldn’t’
When filming in Georgia began a month later, “it was difficult,” she says.
“I will not lie. I mean, it’s a dream come true. But then after you get the dream, the work starts. What was really difficult is the things that were happening to the character,” Mpasi says.
"It’s a dream come true. But then after you get the dream, the work starts."
Phylicia Pearl Mpasi
To recap a few of Celie’s struggles: Her mother dies. As a teenager, she’s raped and impregnated by the man she believes to be her father, then has her two babies taken from her. She’s forced into an abusive marriage and a life of toil and pain.
“Mentally I could separate, but my body couldn’t separate it. After a while, I started walking with a little bit of a hunch and my head down all the time feeling like the world looked at me in a certain way, where I was ugly, wasn’t beautiful, wasn’t good enough and I was only worthy of abuse. My body really started to feel that so I had to do a lot of self care to get myself out of that space,” Mpasi says.
Her tie with Fantasia and Halle Bailey
Fantasia Barrino, also making her film debut, plays Celie when she’s older. Mpasi says the two didn’t spend much time working together, but their parts are in conversation. Mpasi was able to watch Barrino act so she could mirror Barrino's mannerisms in her own performance.
“I had to know where she was going to end to figure out where I wanted to start. It was mostly me, trying to get into her headspace and look at things like her mannerisms and the cadence of her voice. Vocally, we were so different. My voice naturally sits low. Hers sits high,” she says.
Mpasi was closer to Bailey, who plays the young version of Celie’s beloved sister Nettie, on set. Bailey comprised one half of the sister duo Chloe x Halle, signed to Beyoncé’s record label, and also starred as Ariel in “The Little Mermaid.”
Mpasi says Bailey was her advocate on set.
“What was really special was that she defended me a lot. I would say yes to anything. If they were like, ‘Get up at 2 a.m. and work for 24 hours, I would have been like, ‘Yes.’ And she would be like, ‘No, you actually don’t have to do that. Because at the end of the day, you need to be energized, and ready to do this very, very, very hard and taxing work.’ She knew those cues from 'The Little Mermaid' and how to advocate for yourself in a way that is still kind and still warm and open,” she says.
As she makes her movie musical debut at the end of 2023, she looks ahead to the next things she wants to manifest.
“I would love to sell my show that I’m a star vehicle for myself that I wrote. I would love to lead a film. I would love to play Viola Davis’ daughter in something. And I would like to set roots somewhere and have my mail go to one place.”