Meet the Real Jennifer Hudson: The Actress Shares What She's Learned Since Dreamgirls

She's grown up--the hard way and the happy way--since snagging that Dreamgirls Oscar eight years ago. Let Hudson, now the costar of The Color Purple on Broadway, share what she's learned with you.

She's grown up—the hard way and the happy way—since snagging that Dreamgirls Oscar eight years ago. Let Hudson, now the costar of The Color Purple on Broadway, share what she's learned with you.

"When I hear people say, 'Jennifer Hudson, Oscar, Grammy winner,' I'm like, Who are they talking about? That's me?" Hudson says. "Certain things you can never really get used to."

Jennifer Hudson grew up singing in church, but despite her powerhouse voice, she was too shy to face the audience. "I used to beg for a solo, and then when they gave it to me, I would be too afraid to sing," she says. "I didn't start singing with my eyes open until I was 19 years old."

She's nothing but confident now: The 34-year-old has an Oscar and a Grammy, has sung for the Pope and the President ("We speak to each other like we've been knowing each other forever," she says of the latter), and is making her Broadway debut this month as Shug Avery in an all-new rendition of The Color Purple. Hudson also has a role in Spike Lee's black comedy Chiraq, slated for release in December. The title is the slang term commonly used to describe Chicago's South Side, because of the area's war-zone-level violence; Hudson plays a woman whose daughter is killed by a stray bullet while she's walking her to school.

The story of brutality, loss, and anger connected with her unlike any project before. "There's a scene where we're all holding up boards with [photos of] our slain children on them. I turned around, and it's a sea of real women [as extras] holding pictures of children they actually lost," she says. "I'm a character holding a picture of a little girl, but in real life I have the same story."

Hudson, of course, is talking about the 2008 murder of her mother, brother, and nephew, who were shot by her sister's estranged husband—a subject she rarely discusses. "It's frustrating as hell to me to have somebody who ain't lost nothing try to talk to me about it," she says. "I want to say, 'Don't even bother, because you know nothing.' But you never know how much you can get through until you're going through it."

What helped her through it? Giving birth a year later to her son, David, was the best therapy, she says, if bittersweet. "I went from being an aunt, having a mom, and being a child to not having a mom, becoming a mom, and raising my own child," she says. "I tell David [now six] all the time, 'You saved my life.' " After he was born, she and fiancé David Otunga moved from Florida back to Chicago—it's the place she will always call home. "Here I get to take off Little Miss Celebrity and be normal, let my feet touch the ground," she says. "I feel like it keeps me me."

She realizes that she's diving into these projects at a time when race is a national conversation, and that she's going to have to discuss "our history in America, our trials and tribulations," with her son eventually. "I've started by telling him some of the world's greatest people—leaders and athletes—are black people," she says. "But I also tell him the reality of things. When a little black boy was playing in a playground with a toy gun and got shot by police, I told him, 'You can't go outside and play with a gun. That's not safe or smart for you to do.' I want to teach him, to make him able to make smart decisions for himself." Someday she'll talk to him about the racism she's faced: when she was nine and harassed by police for sitting on the steps of her church barefoot; when, far later in life, movers would only communicate with her white driver about where to put her things in her new house; when flight attendants demanded to see her ticket to prove she was sitting in first class instead of coach. "It's disappointing more than anything," she says. "Forget culture shock: It's a time shock. This is really happening! But I feel like a majority of us in America are in denial about it."

The actress, who's also appeared in Empire, has more projects lined up, including a role in Confirmation, the HBO movie about Anita Hill starring Kerry Washington, who's also executive-producing. People like Oprah are in the contact list of Hudson's phone, but she still has an unbelievable perspective: "My whole life, through the good things, the bad things, I know nothing is guaranteed," she says. "I've seen the highest of the highs and the lowest of the lows and everything in between, just like Shug. But what my mother, my grandmother, and all the powerful women in my family instilled in us—our faith, and how to make it on our own—carries me through. It's like they are very much still here." She's clearly taken on the mantle: Everyone in her family now calls her Mama Hud. "I would've never guessed I would be that person," she says. "But I love it."