(photo credit: Lionsgate 2009)
Precious is a thought-provoking, gut-wrenching and heartbreaking independently-funded film that went on to become an Academy-Award winning success!
The movie is about an overweight, dark-skinned African American girl dealing with incest and child and sexual abuse who has to “push” through the abuse, her illiteracy and teen motherhood by attending an alternative school in hopes for her life to head in a new direction. Though most are familiar with these details, having read the novel the film was based on, there are many behind-the-scenes trivia you probably didn’t know happened in order to make this adapted film come to the big screen — Like the name of the film was changed from the novel’s name Push: The Novel to Precious to avoid conflict with the 2008 action film, Push. The novel was also republished as Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire.
Read on for more secrets behind the making of Precious.
Five Weeks
Although a lot happened, the film was a quick shoot. It took only five weeks to shoot this critically-acclaimed success.
Source: Lionsgate
The Audition
Gabourey Sidibe’s college friend encouraged her to audition. The morning of the audition Sidibe couldn’t take her normal route to college because of the filming of American Gangster. Therefore, she went to audition instead. She beat out 400 girls for the role. She was cast six weeks before filming started.
Source: YouTube | America’s Got Talent
Alice Tan Ridley
This actress/singer is actually Sidibe’s mother. She was cast as Mary (Precious’ mother) in an early version of the film that never happened.
Mo’Nique’s Role
Instead, Mo’Nique took on the role as Precious’ disturbed mother who only wanted someone to love her and was willing to allow her daughter to be abused for her to get “love” from Precious’ father.
Mo’Nique said she found the experience of playing Mary therapeutic, having been sexually abused by a family member herself, and that she took the role to raise awareness of sexual abuse, though she initially had doubts about the part.
In 2010, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this film.
Unrehearsed Scene
Before filming the scene where Precious slaps Consuela for the “F for fat” comment, Lee Daniels told Sidibe to slap actress Angelic Zambrana as hard as possible — not letting the rest of the cast know. It provoked a natural reaction from the rest of the cast during the fight scene.
Source: YouTube
Mariah Carey
In the final confrontation scene, Carey was supposed to act like she was in horror. Instead, Carey provoked a natural emotion of tears and because of that, Daniels decided to keep the reaction in the film. Carey was chosen to play the social worker Mrs. Weiss due her performance in Tennessee (2008), which is a film produced by Daniels.
Source: WENN
Losing Crew
No word on how it happened, but Daniels lost plenty of his crew during the five weeks of shooting: an editor, three locations managers, two producers, two assistant directors, a cinematographer, two sound people, two video playback people, three continuity people and two caterers. Whew!
Source: WENN
The Promotion
Oprah Winfrey was so moved by the film she called Perry and discussed promoting the film with him. They called up Daniels while he was accepting an award at the Sundance Film Festival to let him know they were going to do whatever they could to help promote the film. And that they did with their production companies Harpo Productions and 34th Street Films.
Battling Distributors
The film was independently-produced by Lee Daniels Entertainment, but the completed film was being fought over by Lionsgate and the Weinstein Company after the 2009 Sundance Film Festival. But after Winfrey and Perry got involved, so did Perry’s existing relationship with Lionsgate, hence they became the distributor.
Stefan Trautmann / WENN
Heath Ledger
According to Daniels, Ledger stopped by the set one day. The film was completed on January 23, 2008 — the day after Ledger’s death.
WENN.com
Helen Mirren
Mirren was supposed to play Mrs. Weiss (before Carey), but she later dropped out!
Source: YouTube
Geoffrey Fletcher
Daniels asked the adjunct professor of Columbia University’s Tisch School of the Arts to adapt the novel. Fletcher wrote the adaptation of the film and became the first African-American writer to win the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay — one of the top eight awards! Job well done!
Opening Credits
The opening credits are in dedication to Precious’ illiteracy, misspelling the title as “Precious (Base on Nol by Saf)” with the correction “(Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)” underneath.
Best Picture
Before its release, it won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, becoming the first film to win the award at Sundance and go on to be nominated for the Best Picture Academy Awards. The film was the first Best Picture nominee to be directed by an African-American.
