Whoopi Goldberg jumped at the opportunity to work with her friend Tony Goldwyn on his 2023 comedy-drama, Ezra – no questions asked.
Speaking to People Magazine about how he recruited “comedic goddess” Goldberg, 68, for the supporting role of Jayne – a comedy manager – Goldwyn revealed all he had to do was send her an email.
Recalling his conversation with scriptwriter Tony Spiridakis, Goldwyn shared, “When we talked about Whoopi, I said, ‘Well, if we can get Whoopi. Let me write her and see if she’s even around,’ because she would be a complete home run to have – one of the goddesses of American comedy.”
“So I just emailed Whoopi, who I’m very friendly with and I’ve had a long history with,” Godlwyn said, with his “long history” comment referring to the time they first shared the screen together in 1990’s Ghost.
He continued, “I emailed her. I said, ‘I’m doing this project with Bobby and Bob De Niro and we had this part and I don’t know if you’re available.”
That’s all Goldberg needed to hear to sign up for the project, even forgoing the script.
Goldwyn recalled, “She just wrote back, going, ‘I’m in.’ I said, ‘Do you want to read the script?’ She said, ‘No, I’m in.’ I sent her the script, of course but she said yes before. She just says, ‘That sounds so fun.’ And that’s Whoopi.”