Whoopi Goldberg Corrects A Reviews’ Claim That She Wore A Fat Costume for “Till”

Whoopi Goldberg is clearing the air after a review of her most recent movie, “Till,” implied that Goldberg was filming while wearing a fat costume.

Goldberg is only mentioned briefly in a review that claims that she was “in a distracting fat suit” for her part as Emmett Till’s grandmother. Since then, the line has been removed from the review, including an editor’s note.

“I don’t really care how you felt about the movie, but you should know that was not a fat suit,” Goldberg said on Monday’s episode of “The View.” “That was me. That was steroids.”

Goldberg was speaking about the health issues she had with sciatica, a type of nerve pain, that required hospitalisation and the use of a walker. Steroids, which can be used to alleviate sciatica symptoms, were being used at the time, she revealed on “The View.”

The actress said it is ok not to be a fan of the film but leave people’s physical appearance out of the critiques.

But it’s not unusual for a well-known and honoured actress to don a fat suit in a major movie. Many celebrities have worn fat suits, sometimes in derogatory ways. The performers playing obese characters in films like “Shallow Hal” from 2001 and “American Crime Story: Impeachment” from last year frequently aren’t actually obese. In humorous roles, men have also donned fat costumes, most notably John Travolta in “Hairspray,” Ryan Reynolds in “Just Friends,” and Eddie Murphy in “Norbit.”

Famous actors have started donning fat costumes more frequently only this year alone. Tom Hanks and Renée Zellweger, both Oscar winners for their performances in “Elvis” and “The Thing About Pam,” are two examples. In the upcoming musical adaption of “Matilda,” Emma Thompson is shown wearing one, and Brendan Fraser portrays an obese man nearing the end of his life in the awards season film “The Whale” while wearing many pounds of prosthetics.

Viewers frequently criticise the procedure, especially when a director opts not to choose an actor whose physique already closely resembles the character. J. Kevin Thompson, a retired professor and media researcher, stated in a recent interview with the New York Times that the use of fat suits in media, mainly when the characters portrayed by actors in fat cases are made fun of or portrayed in an unfavourable light, can have a negative psychological impact on viewers. Women, he added, disproportionately suffer the most of this psychological harm.

“These roles were most often associated with ‘humour,’ which, of course, might not be so funny if one were the butt of the joke,” Thompson told the Times