By Alisha Jackson
Last night, Jennifer Hudson and the cast of The Color Purple paid tribute to Prince the best way the Broadway family knew how. And boy did they nail it.
Related: Prince: Saying Goodbye to a True Original
If you haven’t cried about Prince’s death yet, then you should probably watch the following video in private, because things are about to get ugly. After The Color Purple wrapped last night, the cast, led by Hudson, came back on stage to pay their respects to the late musician.
Hudson led the tribute by thanking the audience for showing up, and prefacing her beautiful statement with “I’m not a speaker by any means. I did not expect to have to speak on tonight, but God has his way.” Hudson continued with, “As we all know, today we lost a legend. Ooh, Jesus, we lost a legend who was a good friend of mine: Prince, who was dear to all of us. Every single one of us.”
“He called me while we were here and asked me to come out, you know, to this event because he was writing his book. And he told me, ‘You can bring your cast members along.’ All these amazing people. Aren’t they awesome? We were honored to be in his presence one last time and we got to have that moment,” Hudson recalled. “So tonight, if you guys don’t mind, we’d like you all to join us in honoring Prince. He said his music will live on and he will live through his music so we want to keep him alive today with this song. I might not get through this, but I will try. Help us out. Can we all do this together?” Hudson asked before shouting, “I know you all know the song!”.
Go ahead and grab your tissues, because you’re gonna need them for the goosebump-inducing rendition of Prince’s “Purple Rain.”
