by Natasha Wolff | April 27, 2026 8:27 pm
A few years ago, the producers of the 2015 revival of the musical The Color Purple offered the role of Shug Avery to Taraji P. Henson[1], the actress says.
She turned them down.
“I said, ‘Hell to the no,’” Henson recalls in a phone conversation. “I can sing, but that’s every night, eight shows a week of singing. I can’t do that. I chickened out. I tried to run from Shug Avery.”
Henson may have tried to run from Shug Avery, but the character wound up catching up with her. She scored the part in the film version of the musical in 2023. The New York Times said it was a “role she seems born to play.”
Broadway has wound up catching up with her, too.
This spring, she made her long-in-the-making Broadway debut in a new production of August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone[2], the second play in his decade-by-decade American Century Cycle. First staged in 1984, it takes place in 1911 at a boarding house run by Seth Holly (here played by Cedric the Entertainer[3]) and his wife Bertha (Henson).
“It’s crazy that something written in the 1980s is still relevant today,” says Henson a few days before previews are set to begin. “You’re talking about identity and self-preservation and people displaced looking for family members. It’s so poignant. It’s so spot on. Every audience of every color will understand and enjoy this play.”
Director Debbie Allen, the renowned actress and dancer, called Henson to see if she’d consider the part.
“I hadn’t read it in a while, but Debbie said, ‘Taraji, this part has your name all over it,’” Henson says. “The universe picked me for this role and this play and this time. It was meant to be, clearly.”
A lot of worlds collided at once.
First, Henson had studied and performed Wilson’s work when she attended Howard University. The playwright, who died in 2005, came to their class to speak to Henson and her classmates.
Allen is also an alum of Howard University. When Henson was six months pregnant and wasn’t sure how to finish school, she was awarded the first Dr. Andrew Arthur Allen scholarship, created by Allen and her sister, Phylicia Rashad, to honor their father and showcase the most “dynamic triple threat coming out of Howard.”
Then, Allen played Henson’s mom in The Division, one of Henson’s first big television roles; she directed her on the sitcom All of Us; and then directed her again during Henson’s career-defining run as Cookie on Empire. Meanwhile, Rashad played Cookie’s arch nemesis on a season of Empire, too.
Recalls Henson of the moment she got Allen’s call, “I thought, ‘I’ve got to be crazy to say no to this.’”
Allen sees Henson’s return to the stage as a kind of homecoming. “This is where she learned her craft. This is where she soared as a very young woman,” says Allen, who describes casting Henson as a “godsend for me as a director.” “Her work ethic is beyond extraordinary and exemplary, as is the joy she brings to work every day. The language and poetry of August Wilson is in her DNA, in her blood memory.”
Cedric the Entertainer first worked with Henson in the 2007 movie Talk to Me, then played her husband in 2011’s Larry Crowne. “She’s the realest person that there is,” he says of his friend. “There’s no part of her personality that isn’t big and honest and beautiful. That’s what makes her such an amazing actress, She makes you feel it, no matter what the emotion is that she’s giving you. And to see her do that from the stage is just really powerful.”
Henson is nervous about making her Broadway debut, but “the nerves are good,” she says. “I’m excited.”
In film and television, “I can turn it on and off. I can say, ‘We got this shot, I’m going to go to my room,’” she adds. “But in the theater, you’ve got to stay present. You’re always there. The show must go on. That’s in me. That’s how I was trained. I haven’t done it in a long time, but I feel more in my skin onstage than on camera.”
Being on Broadway is more immediate than the film and TV work she’s done, which includes, recently, the hugely successful Netflix thriller Straw (written and directed by Tyler Perry); appearing as the Scarab on The Masked Singer; and executive producing the reboot of Star Search.
“You know what I can’t get used to? Seeing my face on the marquee of the Barrymore Theatre,” says Henson. “It’s different than seeing your face on a billboard. This is something you’re working on every day. Sometimes, by the time the billboard goes up, it’s in the past. You’ve already done it. You barely remember doing the project.”
But it’s been nice to be in New York, a change from her usual home in Los Angeles. Henson traveled east with her two French bulldogs, Buddha and Zen. “They haven’t grown into their names yet,” she says. “Zen is the baby, but he’s not Zen yet.”
And she brought a lot of her wardrobe with her.
“In Los Angeles, no one cares. Not one person. But people pay attention to fashion in New York,” Henson says. “I shop all the time. I’m high and low: local designers, a vendor on the street, some person on Instagram. I could shop at a drugstore. Here in New York, I get to wear all the things I purchased, and people pay attention to me just going to work.”
Henson says that despite all her new opportunities, she misses playing Cookie a bit, “but I think we did it with her. She was done,” she says. “If Cookie was still on the air, she would be wearing Schiaparelli gloves.”
Offscreen, Henson says, “[Schiaparelli creative director] Daniel [Roseberry] has me in a chokehold.”
Cookie was an incredibly influential character not just on Henson, but on the entire television and film industry. “Debbie Allen likes to say, ‘You got everybody jobs with that role,’” Henson says. “I’d read scripts and it would describe a character as ‘a Cookie type.’ That was amazing. So many people were looking for Cookie.”
The character also helped Henson offscreen; playing her helped her “learn what my power was.” It led her to create a beauty line called TPH[4], which, like Cookie, she recently took full ownership of after launching in 2020 with an incubator company.
“I’m ready to drop all the new products,” she says. “I’m getting excited.”
And then there’s her Seven Daughters wine[5], which for now features two effervescent varieties. “I hated wine the first time I tasted it,” Henson says, “so it’s a great way to introduce new wine drinkers. It’s light, sweet and easy on the palate.”
Being back in the rehearsal room and getting onstage has made Henson reflect a lot on her career. When she was talking to her younger co-stars, over a few glasses of Seven Daughters wine, “I said to these babies, ‘I had more fun when I was broke and chasing the dream. I think it was more fun then.’”
Now, she says, “I know too much about the business and what goes on behind the curtain. It’s more fun when you don’t know and you’re dumb to the industry.” She says her advice to her younger co-stars has been to be “multifaceted.” To not ignore changes in technology like AI and to never stop performing onstage.
It’s advice Henson is planning to take herself—at least, the performing part.
“I told Debbie yesterday, ‘Debbie, I like it here in New York. I like this feeling I have here onstage. I don’t think I want to go back to Hollywood. I think I want to stay here.’”
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