The Color Purple actress sacked for homophobia loses legal fight
A CHRISTIAN actress who was sacked from a stage show of The Color Purple for homophobic comments has lost a five-year discrimination case.
Seyi Omooba was dropped from the role of lesbian character Celie in a 2019 production of the play in a row about a social media post. She took the theatre and her former agents to an employment tribunal claiming that she was the victim of religious discrimination.
However, her case was thrown out after she admitted that she had not read the script before accepting the lead role. She claimed that she did not realise the character was gay and would not have appeared in the play if she had.
The actress appealed the tribunal’s decision, including its ruling she must pay more than £300,000 in legal costs.
The employment tribunal appeal heard Ms Omooba grew up in a committed Christian family of Nigerian origin. Early in her career, she explained to her agent that, as a Christian, she would not play certain parts. She turned down a part in The Book of Mormon because of its satirical depiction of Christian belief. In December 2018, she accepted an offer from Leicester’s Curve theatre for the lead role in a musical production of Alice Waters’ classic American novel.
The tribunal heard that the 1985 film version with which Ms Omooba was familiar, starring Whoopi Goldberg and directed by Steven Spielberg, had “played down the physical relationship” between Celie and her female lover Shug. In contrast, the stage show “carried more focus” on their lesbianism.
Ms Omooba had not done her homework and “thought of the work in the frame of the film”, Mrs Justice Eady said.
On March 15 2019, the day after the cast was announced, Aaron Lee Lambert, an actor in the musical Hamilton, tweeted an old Facebook post by Ms Omooba. On Sept 18 2014 she had said: “I do not believe you can be born gay, and I do not believe homosexuality is right, though the law of this land has made it legal doesn’t mean it’s right.
“I do believe that everyone sins and falls into temptation but it’s by the asking of forgiveness, repentance and the grace of God that we overcome and live how God ordained us to, which is that a man should leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife.”
Mr Lambert said: “Do you still stand by this post? Or are you happy to remain a hypocrite? Seeing as you’ve now been announced to be playing an LGBTQ character, I think you owe your LGBTQ peers an explanation. Immediately.”
The theatre cancelled Ms Omooba’s appearance after it asked her to renounce the post and she refused.
She began legal proceedings against the theatre and her agents – who had dropped her – in August 2019, supported by Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre.
At the latest hearing, Ms Omooba argued the tribunal’s dismissal of her case and ordering of costs were wrong.
However, Mrs Justice Eady said: “She knew she would not play a lesbian character but had not raised this with the theatre, or sought to inform herself as to the requirements of the role of Celie.”