Wendy Makkena Says Whoopi Goldberg Role Had Deloris Attraction

Wendy Makkena says whoopi goldberg was part of the secret engine behind her Sister Mary Robert performance in Sister Act. She said she played the 1992 character as having an attraction to Deloris, a choice she kept inside her acting process while the film was being made.

That reading surfaced years later, after the movie came out and someone told her that Out Magazine had picked up on the sexual tension between Deloris and Sister Mary Robert. Makkena said, “How am I gonna then justify how obsessed I sort of am with Doloris? And then I thought, 'Well, maybe there's an attraction,'” and later added, “It occurred to me that possibly, Sister Mary Robert was drawn to Dolores unconsciously, subconsciously... that there was some kind of attraction that not even Sister Mary Robert would have been, given who, how very innocent she was, aware of.”

Makkena's private acting choice

Makkena said she used queerness as part of her process without Goldberg or the Sister Act team knowing. That matters because it turns what looked like on-screen chemistry into a deliberate character decision, not a fan theory after the fact. She also said, “[The attraction] adds stakes, and every actor needs to have a secret,” a line that explains why the choice stayed internal rather than becoming part of the film's public framing.

The film, a musical crime comedy, became one of the biggest box-office hits of the early 1990s, which is part of why this recollection still lands. A 1992 hit that returned in a 1993 sequel keeps drawing new readings because the performances were built with more texture than the broad comedy alone suggested. Makkena's account gives that relationship a specific lens: Sister Mary Robert was not only nervous around Deloris, she was, in her view, drawn to her.

Out noticed the tension

Makkena said she realized the attraction had become visible only after release, when a call told her that Out Magazine had noticed the sexual tension between Deloris and Sister Mary Robert. “I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, they picked up on it,'” she recalled. The line between private performance choice and audience interpretation is the friction point here, and it is what makes the disclosure more than a nostalgic cast anecdote.

A third Sister Act film from Disney is reportedly in the works, and this kind of character read will shape how audiences revisit the first two films. For anyone looking back at the 1992 original, Makkena has now said plainly that the attraction was there in her head all along, which is the version worth watching for on a rewatch.