Taraji P. Henson has no beef with Oprah: "What you’re not gonna do is pit two Black women together"

Fans of The Color Purple can rest assured that Taraji P. Henson and Oprah are not seeing red. “What you’re not gonna do is pit two Black women together—not on my watch,” Henson said of her rumored feud with the legendary daytime host and Color Purple producer in a recent interview with NBC’s Today.

It all started when Henson, who plays blues singer Shug Avery in the recent film, spoke out about the less than satisfactory conditions she and her co-stars experienced on set. “They gave us rental cars, and I was like, “I can’t drive myself to set in Atlanta.” This is insurance liability, it’s dangerous. Now they robbing people. What do I look like, taking myself to work by myself in a rental car?” Henson said in an interview with the New York Times. “It’s stuff like that, stuff I shouldn’t have to fight for.” (In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Henson’s co-star Danielle Brooks said the cast didn’t receive proper dressing rooms or food either.)

Because Oprah is the biggest name associated with the film on the production side and after the emergence of a video that seemed to show Winfrey distancing herself from Henson at a photo shoot, speculation ran wild that the two were in some sort of feud as a result of the frustrating filming conditions. (Oprah later addressed the video and said it was just really cold that day.)

Henson is completely shutting this theory down with an earnest plea not to let it overshadow the message of the movie. “I hope they can focus back onto this film, because right now, to me, it feels like what I said is now becoming louder than this beautiful film, and that’s not fair to me, or anybody in the film,” she said. “The film deals with women who are oppressed—who live in an oppressed system. Men and women. And all the characters in that film except for the white people. So that movie is about healing. That movie is about sisterhood.”