Danielle Brooks on Her Oscar Nomination: ‘Look What God Has Done’

It was 3:30 a.m. in New Zealand, where the actress Danielle Brooks was filming a Minecraft movie. But she was wide awake.

“I’m alive and I am an Oscar nominee today,” she said on a video call minutes after the nominations were announced. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go back to sleep.”

Brooks, a past Emmy nominee, Tony nominee and Grammy winner who broke out in “Orange Is the New Black,” is nominated for her supporting actress work in the movie musical “The Color Purple.” Hers is the film’s sole nomination. She plays Sofia, an outspoken woman who knows her own worth and insists on her own autonomy, qualities that make her a target of racialized violence. She first played the part on Broadway in 2015, in a defiant, exuberant turn that The New York Times likened to a “homemade steamroller.” Her film work is perhaps even more irresistible.

Swathed in zebra-print sleepwear, Brooks, 34, discussed, with occasional tears, the joy of the nomination, the differences between theater and film and how she learned to say “Hell, No,” in her own life. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

How does it feel to be an Oscar nominee?

It’s like getting the M.V.P. at the Super Bowl. Crazy. It’s what I always just hoped and dreamed would happen, but for it to actually happen, I’m in shock! It’s like what it says in “The Color Purple”: “Look what God has done.”

What did you learn from playing Sofia on Broadway?

There was such an electricity in the theater, people just had to come see the show. I felt so much pressure. It was playing Sofia, this strong woman who was so sure of herself, that gave me the confidence, every night when I sang “Hell, No,” to say hell, no to my fears. She taught me how to live in my power. Getting to do it on the screen, that’s when I learned how to own my power. People assume that actors have all this confidence and are just brave people, which we are, but we get to hide behind characters. Now I can stand 10 toes down and believe in my heart that I’m worthy of moments like this.