Whoopi Goldberg Says Ain’t Nobody Making a Film About Her Without Talking to Her Family

Hollywood has put out its fair share of terrible celebrity biopics. You know, the kind that get the late stars’ family and fans all kinds of mad. All you have to do is look at Lifetime’s Whitney, Aaliyah: The Princess of R&B and the train wreck that was Nina, the 2016 Nina Simone biopic starring Zoe Saldana, to see what happens when the stars lose control of the narrative.

But Whoopi Goldberg is having none of that. And she’s putting people on notice that she already has a plan in place to make sure no one takes liberties with her life story.

On the December 6 episode of The View, the co-hosts discussed Blonde, the Netflix Marilyn Monroe biopic, which dropped in September. Andrew Dominik, the film’s director, has received his fair share of criticism from those who accuse him of exploiting Monroe. The film also took some heat from Planned Parenthood, which accused the film of contributing “to abortion stigma by using medically inaccurate descriptions of fetuses and pregnancy.”

During that discussion, The View co-host Sunny Hostin suggested that the industry would jump at the chance to bring Whoopi’s life to the big screen after she’s gone. “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,” Hostin said.

But Goldberg shut that talk all the way down by referencing a clause in her will banning unauthorized biopics about her life. “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,” Goldberg said.

And if you’ve ever seen Whoopi read someone who came at her wrong on The View, you already know how that fight will end.