Humiliation: Movie Review Condemns Whoopi Goldberg's Non-Existent 'Fat Suit'

As comedian Brian Regan once pointed out, you shouldn’t ask a woman about her pregnancy — unless you’re sure she’s pregnant.

Regan roughly sketched a rule:

“I think the rule is, ‘Don’t guess at that, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever…'”

The guideline should easily apply to females potentially wearing fat suits, but perhaps Daily Beast contributor Kyndall Cunningham hasn’t heard Brian Regan Live.

In her October 1st review of Till — a new film chronicling the horrid 1955 murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till — Kyndall addressed actress Whoopi Goldberg’s interruptive appearance:

At the fore are moving performances from Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie, Frankie Fiason as her father John Carthan, and John Douglas Thompson as her uncle Moses Wright. Mamie’s journey leading up to the trial is structured by conversations between her and her family members — including Whoopi Goldberg as her mother, Alma Carthan, in a distracting fat suit — her partner Gene Mobley (Sean Patrick Thomas), and civil rights leaders such as Medgar Evers (Tosin Cole), his wife Myrlie Evers (Jamye Lawson), and T.R.M Howard (Robert Guenveur Smith), who assisted in Emmett’s trial. One of the most potent scenes is a brief talk at a dining room table between Mamie and Myrlie, who bond over the unpredictability of raising a child.

It’s too bad the production used a “distracting fat suit” — only it didn’t. That fat suit on Whoopi was nothing more than…Whoopi.

And Whoopi got wind of the review.

She addressed the suit situation on Monday’s installment of The View:

“I have to say something, because there was a young lady who…writes for one of the magazines. And she was distracted by my fat suit in her review. And I’m just going to say this: I don’t really care how you felt about the movie, but you should know that was not a fat suit. That was me. Yeah. And that was steroids.”

“Remember last year?” she queried to her co-hosts.

“You were very sick. You were in the hospital,” Sunny Hostin recalled.

Whoopi offered the writer a life lesson:

“[I] assume you don’t watch [The View], or you would’ve known that that was not a fat suit. But I just want to let you know that it’s okay not to be a fan of a movie, but you want to leave people’s looks out. So just comment on the acting. And…if you have a question, ask somebody. ‘Cause I’m sure you didn’t mean to be demeaning.”

Sara Haines went farther. She suspects the reviewer is a big fat amateur unsuited for movie-reviewing:

“But Whoopi, if that was the distraction and you’re doing movie reviews on such a powerfully impactful…tragic, awful story, then I question your abilities to review a movie in general.”

Whoopi nodded in agreement.

Whoopi gets irritated by a bad review of her movie "Till" because one "young lady who writes for one of the magazines" and was "distracted by my fat suit."
"That was not a fat suit, that was me," she said.
"I question your abilities to review a movie," Sara Haines chided. pic.twitter.com/nAOgGTiM7m

— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 3, 2022

The Daily Beast has since updated its article, with a note drawing attention to the gargantuan gaffe:

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect that Whoopi Goldberg says she was not wearing a fat suit.

Oy.

Some people wear fat suits, and some people don’t need ’em. And some people look like Elvis in the ’70s — medical issues can blow any of us up like balloons. Whoopi knows what that’s like, in more ways than one; in 2014, she told Marlo Thomas how she got her name:

“I’m a farter.”

She’s also a Karen:

Back to Brian Regan, he suggests a save for the pregnancy flub:

“Hey, when’s that baby due?”

“What baby?”

“At the zoo — the pandas. I knew they were trying to have one. I just, you know, thought we’d talk about ’em.”

It’s something to keep in your pocket if you ever make the mistake. But best practice: Keep your pregnancy and fat-suit suspicions to yourself.