This Actress Played Her ‘Sister Act’ Character As Gay For Whoopi Goldberg
In our hearts, we always knew.
Featured Image: Whoopi Goldberg and Wendy Makkena in Sister Act (Everett)
Sister Act has always had a devoted LGBTQ+ fan base, but a new little tidbit about how actress Wendy Makkena, aka Sister Mary Robert, envisioned her character as part of the fam is blowing everyone’s mind.
Back in 2021, Makkena was a guest on the podcast You Might Know Her From, where she talked in depth about her acting career, including her time working on Sister Act and Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit.
The podcast has recently been sharing old clips to social media, including one in which Makkena revealed her intentional decision to play Sister Mary Robert, the sweet, shy nun who could barely sing above a whisper for most of the film, as a lil gay for Whoopi Goldberg’s Deloris Van Cartier (posing as Sister Mary Clarence).
When thinking through the motivation for her character being “obsessed” with Doloris, Makenna admitted she landed on, “well, maybe there’s an attraction.”
“It occurred to me that possibly Sister Mary Robert was drawn to Deloris unconsciously, subconsciously, that there was some kind of attraction that not even Sister Mary Robert would have been—given how very innocent she was— aware of, and nobody, certainly, noticed it on set,” she explained. “It was just an internal little secret that I used as an actor.”
But, she recalls, her decision felt vindicated when Sister Act came out and someone called her to let her know that “Out Magazine says that how come nobody has noticed the sexual tension between Deloris and Sister Mary Robert? And I remember thinking, ‘Oh my god, they picked up on it.’”
As the podcast hosts noted, it’s a mindblowing reveal, especially for all the baby sapphics who held Sister Act so dear without being able to vocalize exactly why that might have been. Learning years later that there was an intentional acting choice behind that has been a meaningful twist that’s left people freaking out in the comments of the viral clip.
As one person wrote, “Little 8 year old me, unaware of my own sexuality yet, knew it ALLLL along!”
The full podcast episode is available on Spotify.
