‘I had to stop therapy. I needed the pain’: Fantasia Barrino on trauma, triumph and filming The Color Purple

Barrino entered American Idol in 2004 as a young single mother who struggled to read, and won over the nation with her powerhouse voice and personality. Now she is starring in her first film. She discusses poverty, violence, Oprah – and gratitude

‘I wasn’t going to show my face,” Fantasia Barrino says, speaking on a video call from Los Angeles. “But I was like: ‘How rude. I can see her pretty face.” Born and raised in High Point, a small city in North Carolina, Barrino, 39, is famous in the US as the teenage single mother who won American Idol 20 years ago. Now, she is going global, playing Celie in the new musical screen adaptation of The Color Purple, produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey. A star could go any which way with that kind of rags-to-riches story, but you would expect at least a little showbiz haughtiness. I have never met a warmer person in my life. “I’m a Cancer, so I believe in loving and hugging and taking care of everybody,” she says later.

It is hard to think of a story that more encourages compassion than The Color Purple. Alice Walker’s prize-winning epic novel, published in 1982, is the story of downtrodden women surviving the first half of the 20th century in rural Georgia. It starts with rape, incest and teenage pregnancy and moves through loss, estrangement, domestic violence and the brutality of a racist state. It is the last thing you might imagine setting to music, except that the way it resolves – complicated, painful, unvarnished, harmonious – is musical.