Walter Williams III Defends Jennifer Hudson’s Recent Role Choice: Heart First, Score Second
OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
After the low aggregated review score for Jennifer Hudson’s latest film, some online commenters framed the decision to take the part as a “waste of talent.” Her longtime friend Walter Williams III offered a different framing — that the actor chose emotional truth over algorithmic approval.
Williams said that Hudson could have accepted a more commercially predictable script. Instead, he said, she selected a role centering on a single mother of color because the experience reflected real life and required genuine emotional investment. His comment — “She chose the role with her heart, not the rating!” — emphasized a process driven by meaning rather than metrics.
Hudson’s career offers multiple examples of this pattern. Her breakout performance in Dreamgirls won awards not because it was the most market-tested choice, but because she grounded the work in lived feeling. And in The Secret Life of Bees, she again selected a character driven more by interior struggle than by spectacle.
The current debate is really a debate about values: whether the role of an actor is to align with high scores on review platforms — or whether the greater measure is whether the work carries personal truth for the artist. Williams’s defense positions Hudson firmly in the second category.
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