Dec. 10--Chicago singer-turned-actress Jennifer Hudson said she doesn't plan to revisit the 2008 deaths of her family members after she played a woman whose daughter is killed by a stray bullet in "Chi-Raq."
Hudson, 34, said she hesitated when "Chi-Raq" director Spike Lee approached her about starring in the Amazon Studios movie, which opened in select theaters last week. Hudson's mother, brother and nephew were found shot to death in Chicago in October 2008. Hudson's former brother-in-law, William Balfour, was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for the killings.
"This is reality for me. This is my life. A part of my life. And I definitely had that moment of like, 'Are you serious?' But when I really thought about it, I understood why (Lee) came to me and I thought, 'You know what? It's worth me telling my story so that hopefully no one else has a story like this to tell,'" Hudson told W Magazine in a story posted online Wednesday.
"The film we're doing is trying to save my city, as my mother said, take care of home. So for that reason I was like, 'Okay, I get it, it's worth doing.' But I don't think it's anything I will ever, ever revisit again."
The film, which is a twist on the Greek comedy "Lysistrata" and stars John Cusack and Nick Cannon, explores gun violence on the South Side. Hudson weighed in on the timing of the release of the movie, which hit theaters just days after last week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif.
"If we didn't have these issues, I don't think a movie like that would have needed to be made. That's the point of making it, to make people pay attention and say, 'Guys, we have to start somewhere,'" Hudson said.
"And it's not just the city of Chicago. It's everywhere. It's a bad time right now, no matter where we look. Kids can't go to school, people can't go to church, you can't go to the movies. It's like, what are we doing to ourselves? What's happening? We're acting like animals."
