Sister Act 3 Behind The Scenes
Leanna Perr
Made for only a reported $31 million, the comedy starring Whoopi Goldberg as a Reno lounge singer who hides out in a convent after witnessing her mob boss boyfriend commit murder was the sleeper hit of the summer in 1992. It ended up the sixth-biggest movie of the year worldwide and No. 3 domestically, behind only Batman Returns and Lethal Weapon 3.
Goldberg, however, fresh off her Oscar win for Ghost, had serious clout and she was instrumental in both charting Sister Act's course and keeping it afloat along with director Emile Ardolino.
1. The lead role of the singer who poses as a nun to hide from the mob was originally written for Bette Midler. "But I said, 'My fans don't want to see me in a wimple,'" the star of stage and screen told Metro in 2010.
Let it be known she was talking about the times she may have chosen poorly. "I also didn't do Misery and Kathy Bates won an Oscar for it," Midler added. She didn't immediately turn Sister Act down, but ultimately talked herself out of it, as remembered by screenwriter Paul Rudnick.
2. Rudnick first got the idea for the movie in the late 1980s as a vehicle for Midler, he recalled in a 2009 New Yorker essay. His original intent was to satirize and subvert the "prissy uplift" of the likes of The Sound of Music and The Flying Nun. "It was kind of show biz versus the church," he told Entertainment Weekly in 1992, "and showbiz would definitely win."
4. According to Entertainment Weekly, Midler wanted Spanish auteur Pedro Almodvar, known best at the time for 1988's Women on the Edge of a Nervous Breakdown, to direct. It's unclear if he ever knew that, but the studio already wanted Dirty Dancing director and Oscar winner (for the 1983 documentary He Makes Me Feel Like Dancin') Emile Ardolino to helm Sister Act.
Ardolino actually went on to direct Midler in a TV movie of Gypsy, which was nominated for 12 Emmys (including for his directing) and won one for music direction. Sadly, the accolades came posthumously, as Ardolino died of complications from AIDS in November 1993, just weeks before the movie premiered. He was only 50.
6. Rudnick was hesitant about staying on the project once Midler left, but he tried. "The Disney notes were always phrased in the most positive, gee-wouldn't-it-be-great-if tone, and that was the problem," he wrote. "It was like being trampled to death by cheerleaders."
Once they had a cast, Nancy Meyers, who at the time had yet to direct but had plenty of writing credits, including the 1986 Goldberg comedy Jumpin' Jack Flash, gave it a whirl. Then around September 1991, Goldberg requested her friend and noted script doctor Carrie Fisher be brought in to punch up her dialogue. Steel Magnolias scribe Robert Harling was in the mix as well.
"It was very difficult," Ardolino admitted to the Chicago Tribune in June 1992, once the finished product was safely in theaters. "It was difficult because the script was originally written for Bette Midler, and when Whoopi came in, adjustments had to be made.''
Divine intervention not imminent, they just started rolling with what they had. "It put Whoopi and me in a difficult position,'' Ardolino said. ''It's problematic to be shooting out of order and then suddenly you come to a scene that hasn't been written yet. What precedes it? What follows it?'"
"Whoopi had some problems with the studio at some point, but she and I, we had to actually do it, which meant that every day there had to be a scene that was shot," the director said. "We never had a blowup, nor did we have a situation where we didn't get something in the can every day. We both complained from time to time because it was difficult, but we got along just fine. There was a lot of stress, but I think that we did our best. Whoopi is very creative and we challenged each other."
11. She sounded like a natural at the time, but Goldberg had to learn to sing to play struggling Supremes-style girl group leader Deloris Van Cartier. "Asking me to sing," she told Entertainment Weekly in 1992, "is like asking me to be an Olympic swimmer."
Ultimately the film's music producer and orchestrator, Marc Shaiman, showed her how, Goldberg said in an appearance at the 2020 Vulture Festival. "He taught me what to do. And once we were able to establish that [Deloris] was a one-hit wonder and she had just gone this far, and then all this happens and she's working in the casinos, you know, it made it a lot easier to do. And then everyone was ok."
"He's responsible for my whole career," she said during the cast's 25th reunion on The View of the music producer and vocal guru, whom she reunited with directly after Sister Act for Hocus Pocus (Bette Midler was never far from Sister Act in spirit, was she?) and then right after that for Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
13. Meanwhile, EW also reported that Goldberg almost got fired from the whole thing in the summer of 1991 after missing her first three scheduled appointments with vocal consultant Seth Riggs. In response, Goldberg said those meetings were scheduled before she was under contract (hence no contractual obligation).
14. While the emergence of quiet Sister Mary Robert's powerful singing voice is a triumphant moment, in the performance scenes that's Andrea Robinson doing the vocals for actress Wendy Makenna.
15. Entertainment Weekly reported in 1992 that growing discord between Goldberg and then-Touchstone Pictures chief Jeffrey Katzenberg seemed to peak when they argued over the casting of Deloris' love interest in the film. According to EW, Katzenberg wanted a Black actor and Goldberg insisted they consider white ones too. "How long have you been in this business?" she reportedly fired back during one argument. Fisher, a friend of both, advised Goldberg to send Katzenberg a hatchet and say, "'Please bury this on both our behalfs.'"
17. On location in San Francisco they used the exterior of St. Paul's Catholic Church in Noe Valley for St. Katherine's, Deloris' place of refuge. The production designers redressed the surrounding storefronts to make the neighborhood look more rundown.
18. Najimy, who played the relentlessly upbeat, booming-voiced Sister Mary Patrick, put her foot down at a scene in which her character was protesting in front of a neighborhood adult bookstore because she felt it was a little judgy for her big-hearted character. Instead, a would-be customer is deterred when he sees the nuns in front of the store selling raffle tickets and it proves just too difficult to get past Mary Patrick's big smile.
She was watching TV one night and Hart gushed, "'Sally Field...you gotta love her,'" Najimy told the Los Angeles Times in 1992. "And there it was. That was my character. That bubbly, always-smiling girl...without legs."
"The one sequel I wanted to do, I thought I was going to do, I was waiting for that call, was Sister Act," the prolific Oscar-nominated actor told Insider in 2021. "I never got that call and I said, 'What!?' It was so perfect. The guy's in prison. He gets out of prison and he chases her down. My agent said, 'Harvey, you're not in the movie.' I said, 'No!'"
It's not as if he was replaced or anything: Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit takes place in a high school and Deloris is just posing as a nun so she can...teach Catholic school. (There are some holes, but it's joyful, joyful fun all the same.)
"When she heard 'Action!' Whoopi pulled her hands out from under her tabard, and out came those big white Mickey Mouse hands with the stuffed four-finger gloves," Najimy recalled to the LA Times in 1992. "One minute we were playing off-color charades and manic games with lewd lyrics and the next we snapped right back into hymn singing."
She and Makenna would keep their habits on for nights out while shooting in Reno. "That was great, because I love gambling," Najimy reportedly said. "Wendy smokes, and we'd sit at the 21 table in our nun outfits with drinks in front of us. That was hilarious."
"I can't believe this is happening and it was 25 years ago," she said via video message during the 2017 cast reunion on The View." I would like to say hello to all of the nuns. I feel I must be the oldest nun left. Every single nun was wonderful. I have such fond memories of when we did those crazy, crazy films. And we laughed and laughed. I can't believe it's been 25 years. I send you lots of love and I wish I were with you."
26. Actress Donna Douglas, best known for playing Elly May Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies, and her business partner Curtis Wilson sued Goldberg, Midler, their production companies, talent agency CAA and Disney for $200 million, alleging they'd pilfered the story for Sister Act from a script they'd already sent to Disney in the 1980s based on the book A Nun in the Closet. The plaintiffs reportedly turned down an offer of a $1 million settlement, hoping to win a bigger judgment in court, but the judge ruled for the defendants.
27. Disney and Sony Pictures were also sued in 2011 by a nun, Delois Blakely, who alleged that her 1987 memoir The Harlem Street Nun was the real inspiration for Sister Act. She dropped her complaint voluntarily, but refiled the next year, asking for $1 billion in damages. The New York Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit, with prejudice, in 2013.
28. Past legal hiccups didn't deter the development of the years-in-the-making Broadway musical adaptation of Sister Act, which finally premiered in April 2011. It was nominated for five Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Original Score for Alan Menken, but only ran until August 2012.
30. Goldberg's daughter prefers Sister Act 2, starring her mom and a young Lauryn Hill as a teen with a chip on her shoulder and a voice that's ready for prime-time (and the all-state choir competition).
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