Life Lessons from Whoopi Goldberg

Whoopi Goldberg by Brigitte Lacombe for Interview

Welcome to Life Lessons. This week, we’re revisiting our cover story with Whoopi Goldberg from our June 1992 issue. In it, the actor, comedian, and TV personality sits down with Matthew Modine for a conversation about defying Hollywood, life as a single mother on welfare, and why she keeps telling people what they don’t want to hear. 

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“I am a humanist before anything. Before I’m a Jew, before I’m Black, before I’m a woman.”

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“There’s nothing anybody could take away from me, really, that’s of consequence, so I don’t mind saying the things that I say or making the observations that I make.”

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“I used to talk about abortion in my first show. The issue isn’t whether you are for or against abortion. The issue is, do you have the right to tell somebody what they can and cannot do? If you’re a theologian, you can say, “Well, god says do that,’ but god doesn’t say that. God says, ‘I’ve given you freedom of choice.'”

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“You know, welfare’s a funny thing. When I lived in San Diego, I used to get $273 a month for my daughter, and food stamps and Medi-Cal… It’s a system set up to keep people on it. It’s set up to keep you exactly where you are. I didn’t want to be there.”

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“There’s a very nice feeling that there are many, many spirits inside of me looking after me, along with my own sort of nuclei spirit that is sort of growing up a little bit.”

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“I don’t want to be talked down to anymore, I don’t want to be dealt with like a nonentity. And I don’t want other people to have to feel like that.”

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“In Hollywood, you go for  a role and they look at you and say, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, we need a really attractive woman.’ You gulp and you say, ‘Okay, you mean you need a woman who doesn’t quite look like me’…Because people don’t think about what they say, they say things that are very hurtful. You can’t get crazy at them; you just have to remind yourself that what they’re saying is not true. This has been a lifelong process… I sometime wish I had this information when I was a kid—it would have saved me a lot of tears.”

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“I gave the Hollywood chapter of the NAACP the big old finger during the Color Purple thing, you know, which cost us, I believe, an Academy Award for that film.”

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“[Robert Altman’s] vision is different. He holds up the mirror to the light and reflects back what people are, you know. And in their humor and in their horror, people see it very clearly. By far the most emotional experience I’ve had on a film was with him. Every time we worked, I knew he was rooting for me—and when people believe in you, you can fly.”

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“I have a very bad reputation in the business because I have no qualms about saying I disagree. You’re not supposed to suck your teeth or have an opinion. There are all these dos and don’ts”