Cynthia Erivo and Jennifer Hudson sing the purple duet again – Watch

Cynthia Erivo and Jennifer Hudson had a reunion to sing about, okay!

The two actresses — who starred on Broadway in the 2015 revival The color Purple – were together again on the Wednesday, November 27 episode of The Jennifer Hudson Showwhere they reminisced about their experience on stage and even broke into song.

It was an emotional experience for Erivo, who cried as she looked back at photos from her time in the musical with Hudson. “Why do I feel like I’m going to cry?” she said before the screams came, later telling Hudson she was feeling emotional. “It’s been a really long journey. That young lady had no idea what was in front of her. She was just trying to get through every show.”

But Hudson saw more than that. The EGOT winner praised Erivo, telling the audience that Erivo “sang us down every night on that set of Color Purple live. I sat there and I watched her do it every night.”

“You earned your way here, young lady,” Hudson said. “So take it in and embrace it.”

Erivo, 37, played Celie in the musical adaptation of The color Purplealong with Hudson’s Shug Avery. The musical – written by Marsha Norman based on both the novel written by Alice Walker and the 1985 Steven Spielberg film – also starred Danielle Brooks as Sofia.

All three actresses made their Broadway debuts in the show, which opened on December 10, 2015 and ran through January 8, 2017. Erivo would go on to win a Tony Award for her role as well as a Grammy Award for the show’s cast album and a Daytime Emmy Award for performing a song from the show Today.

In the wake of his stage success, Erivo launched a career on the silver screen. She has already been nominated twice for an Oscar and is currently in the film adaptation of Evilwhich will undoubtedly be one of the biggest films of the year.

It’s an incredible journey, especially considering Erivo never imagined she’d make it to Broadway. She had starred in director John Doyle’s revival of The color Purple at the Menier Chocolate Factory in London, but didn’t think the producers were serious about transferring it to the Great White Way.

“I thought they were joking,” she told Hudson, 43. “We did the show in London in a really small 200-seat theater. And I was happy to do that. And then at press night, one of the producers was said, ‘Would you go to Broadway with this?’ And I thought he was just being nice. … ‘If you want me,’ I said.

Things only sunk in when Erivo boarded his plane to move to New York. “I didn’t believe it until I was actually at the airport with a ticket in my hand and I had to get on the plane,” she said. “When I was on the plane… I realized, ‘Oh, I’ve got to leave the place I was born in to go somewhere.’ I had never done that before.”

After reflecting on their time at the show, including how they felt when Aretha Franklin entered the theater, the two women sang a snippet of “What about love?”

The love ballad, sung between Celie and Shug, is one of the beloved songs from the musical’s score by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray. It famously closed Act 1 as the two characters realized the power of their budding romance.

“I want you to be a story for me that I can believe in forever,” they sing.

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Viewers may also remember the song from the 2023 film adaptation, in which Fantasia Barrino played Celie and Taraji P. Henson played Shug.

“Do you remember this?” Hudson said afterwards. “It came back! Like the old days!”

The Jennifer Hudson Show sent on weekdays (check local lists).