Benjamin Jones
Whoopi Goldberg has been in the spotlight for four decades. Today, what she wants is a quiet place in the sun. She found a holiday home – and tranquility – on the Italian island of Sardinia.
“A lot of people just need a place they can go and just ‘Aaaaaaaah,’” she said. “The more I wrote about my mother, I thought, I would have loved to have given her that. The same goes for my brother.”
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She has been thinking a lot about her mother, Emma, and brother, Clyde, who have both passed away. They are the subjects of Goldberg’s new memoir, “Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me,” which will be released this week.
In the book, she portrays her childhood – growing up as Caryn Johnson in a housing project in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood – as quite idyllic. “It was; I was very lucky,” she said. “For me it was a great moment to be able to have freedom with a mom who really just said, ‘Listen, you’re going to have to figure some things out on your own. the answers.'”
Her mother was a teacher, and when young Caryn dropped out of school, she made a pact with her mother to use the city’s museums and libraries to continue learning. “You know, a lot of people had two parents; I only had one,” Goldberg said. “And that mother acted like 900 people, you know? She never insisted on what we didn’t have; he did we have and how to celebrate it.”
Goldberg began acting on stage, made it to Broadway and received an Oscar nomination for her first major film role, “The Color Purple.” For a time, she is said to have become the highest-paid actress in Hollywood, with hits such as “Sister Act.”
She says her mother also had a talent for acting, like when Marlon Brando stopped by: “My mother would turn into ‘the other Emma,’” Goldberg said. “She came in and I stood up specifically to say as she came toward us, ‘Don’t be scared. That’s Marlon Brando sitting on the couch.’ But I couldn’t – all I could say was, ‘Hey, Mom, come meet Marlon Brando, who came to visit.’ And she simply said: ‘Mister Bran-do.’ Wait, wait, who they are you?”
Patrick Swayze wanted her to play a psychic in “Ghost,” for which Goldberg won an Oscar.
Add to that the Oscar, two Emmys, a Grammy and a Tony, making her one of about 20 people with EGOT status.
Her book chronicles her early career and doesn’t hold back, detailing problems with drugs, welfare and learning that marriage isn’t for her after three tries.
Doane asked, “Are you still in love with the idea of being in love or is that over?”
“I think other people seem to shine when they’re in love, and I like seeing that,” she said. “But for me, it’s like I shine when I’m no in love, which is normal. And the older I get, the happier I become.
“And so, just in case, and I’m directing this to people who might want to write me on the internet, here’s the thing: I know how cute I am. So, you don’t have to tell me that I’m not attractive enough to have a boyfriend Because, surprisingly, I’ve had many!”
“Are you always as confident as you seem?”
“I’m very confident,” Goldberg said. “But I’m also confident in the fact that I make huge mistakes and step in a lot of poop along the way.”
Black stone
On “The View,” the talk show she has co-hosted for 16 years, Goldberg made a comment about the Holocaust that she says has been misunderstood. She apologized, but ABC suspended her for two weeks in 2022.
Doane asked, “When you look back on that Holocaust comment on ‘The View,’ the one you got suspended for, do you regret that?”
“I don’t know how to respond to this,” she said, “because people are waiting for me to say something. I said what I had to say and they suspended me. opinion. And if anyone is really interested. [in what I said] in full, they can search it. But I won’t put myself in that position again.”
She is a longtime advocate for a range of issues, often using the show as a platform. But in Sardinia she manages to disconnect from the world. She browses audiobooks (she has about 9,000 of them) and sometimes just…sits.
Looking back at his peninsula, Doane asked, “Oh my God, how did you get away?”
“Very reluctantly!” she laughed.
She dreams of finding a way to spend six months a year in Sardinia. “I’m ready to not be scrutinized as closely as I am,” she said. “And I think the further I get away from opinion television, the easier it will be for a while.”
At 68 years old and a great-grandmother, Whoopi Goldberg’s pioneering journey has been one of reinvention and determination. She calls herself “a unique kind of person” and says she was well equipped — starting with her mother’s lessons in that two-bedroom New York apartment. This makes her presence in Sardinia even more impressive.
“It’s the end of a peninsula,” she said. “I mean, I come from the projects. I have a peninsula! It’s a long way from Chelsea!”
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Story produced by Aria Shavelson. Publisher: Remington Korper.
Seth Doane
