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Whoopi Goldberg is looking back at how Patrick Swayze convinced her to take on her Oscar-winning role in 1990’s Ghost.
The actress told author Dave Karger in his new book 50 Oscar Nights, via People magazine, that she needed a bit of persuading before she decided to play psychic Oda Mae Brown in the Jerry Zucker-directed film.
“I get a phone call from my agent, Ron Meyer, who says, ‘Patrick Swayze has been hired for this movie. Patrick is not going to do this if you don’t do it. Can you make some time for him and the director to come up?’” Goldberg recalled.
The EGOT winner added, “So they [Zucker and Swayze] flew in, I meet Patrick, and out of the blue, we’re old friends. … About 40 minutes go by and Patrick says, ‘Please do this [movie] with me.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And that’s how it happened.”
In Ghost, Goldberg plays Oda Mae Brown, a reluctant psychic who helps a young man, Sam Wheat (Swayze), communicate with his girlfriend (Demi Moore) after he is murdered.
The View co-host also admitted that they didn’t anticipate how successful the movie would be. “I said yes, not really knowing what it was going to be,” she said. “It wasn’t until we all saw the film that we realized what we had.”
As for working with Swayze, who died in 2009, Goldberg said, “He was sexy and sweet and just a terrific human being to me.”
Goldberg won the Academy Award for best supporting actress in 1991, making her the second Black actress to take home the honor in that category, more than 50 years after Hattie McDaniel’s historic win for Gone with the Wind in 1940. Goldberg previously scored an Oscar nom for The Color Purple in 1986.
The Sister Act actress also previously told Naomi Campbell in 2020 that Swayze was the one who convinced producers that she was the perfect person for the role in Ghost.
She remembered asking her agent why she didn’t have to audition for the part, to which he told her, “They don’t want you. They think that your persona, that Whoopi, is too big and will take people out of the movie.”
But she said Swayze had been wanting to work with her for some time, adding, “I’d never met him, but he was a fan.”
50 Oscar Nights hits bookshelves on Jan. 23.
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