In the movie “Waiting to Exhale,” Loretta Devine’s character, Gloria, eventually finds love with a man who unconditionally accepts her and her bountiful curves.
But the actress says that off-screen — it was a different story.
“Gregory was so wonderful in so many ways. He was my leading man in ‘Waiting To Exhale’ and he was the only man smart enough on my first day of shooting to have roses everywhere for me, and I always brag on him because nobody else did that,” she says in a recent episode of “Uncensored.”
Hines played the man lucky enough to land Gloria.
“I remember him telling me, ‘Now as soon as this movie is over you have to lose all the weight to move into the next category.’ I don’t know category that was because I never lost the weight like he talked about,” she says the actor told her.
Devine said the pair maintained a sibling-like friendship and that her weight did not slow down the trajectory of her career. She says that despite Hollywood being difficult for Black actors, she never focused on issues such as colorism.
“I never even thought about my looks so much,” she said. “It was always about my talent and I think I sort of got that mentality about things when I was much younger. So I didn’t think about what color I was.”
In an interview with CBR, Devine said she’d like to do more romantic comedies.
“I always wanted to do romantic comedies, those movies back in the day where the dumb blonde won everything, I would love to do a remake of that with a Black dumb blonde,” she said at the time.
“I’m on a new NBC show called ‘Connecting’. I have another movie coming out later in the season around Christmas, I think. So little by little, a lot of the stuff I’ve worked on is being picked up because there’s nothing else to put on TV or there’s no other way to see it.”
