Cynthia Erivo and Jennifer Hudson had a reunion to sing about, okay!

The two actresses – who starred on Broadway in the 2015 revival of The color purple – were together again in the Wednesday, November 27 episode of The Jennifer Hudson Showwhere they reminisced about their experiences on stage and even started singing.

It was an emotional experience for Erivo, who broke down in tears as she looked back at photos of her time in the musical with Hudson. “Why do I feel like I’m going to cry?” she said before the screams came, later telling Hudson she was feeling emotional. “It’s been a very long journey. That young lady over there had no idea what was in store for her. She was just trying to get through every show.”

But Hudson saw more than that. The EGOT winner praised Erivo, telling the crowd that Erivo “sang us every night on that set Color Purple live. I sat there and watched her do it every night.”

“You’ve earned your way here, young lady,” Hudson said. “So take it in and embrace it.”

Erivo, 37, played Celie in the musical adaptation of The color purplenext to Hudson’s Shug Avery. The musical – written by Marsha Norman, based on both Alice Walker’s novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1985 film – also starred Danielle Brooks as Sofia.

All three actresses made their Broadway debut in the show, which opened on December 10, 2015 and ran through January 8, 2017. Erivo would win a Tony Award for her role, as well as a Grammy Award for the show’s cast. album and a Daytime Emmy Award for performing a song from the show Today.

In the wake of her stage success, Erivo launched a career on the silver screen. She has already been nominated twice for an Oscar and is currently starring in the film adaptation of Badwhich will undoubtedly be one of the biggest films of the year.

It’s an incredible journey, especially because Erivo never thought she would make it to Broadway. She starred in director John Doyle’s revival The color purple at Menier Chocolate Factory in London, but didn’t think producers were serious about transferring it to the Great White Way.

“I thought they were joking,” she told the 43-year-old Hudson. ‘We did the show in London in a very small theater with 200 seats. And I did that with great pleasure. And then, at press night, one of the producers said, “Would you like to take this to Broadway?” And I thought he was just being nice. I said, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ … ‘If you want me,’ I said.

It only dawned on me when Erivo boarded her plane to move to New York. “I didn’t believe it until I was actually at the airport with a ticket in my hand and I had to get on the plane,” she said. “When I was on the plane… I realized, ‘Oh, I have to leave the place where I was born to go somewhere.’ I had never done that before.”

After reflecting on their time on the show, including how they felt when Aretha Franklin came to the theater, the two women sang a snippet of “What About Love?”

The love ballad, sung between Celie and Shug, is one of the beloved songs from the musical score by Brenda Russell, Allee Willis and Stephen Bray. It famously closed act 1, as the two characters came to realize the power of their budding romance.

“I want you to be a story for me that I can believe in forever,” they sing.

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Viewers may also remember the song from the 2023 film adaptation, starring Fantasia Barrino as Celie and Taraji P. Henson as Shug.

“Do you remember this?” Hudson said afterwards. “It came back! Like before!”

The Jennifer Hudson Show airs on weekdays (check local listings).