CHICAGO (AP) — In a tearful interview, Jennifer Hudson (photo) said she’s still trying to make her mother proud, and that’s what has kept her going since her mother and two other family members were murdered.
Hudson, who has repeatedly declined to talk publicly about the killings, didn’t directly address the details of the October 2008 slayings in Chicago of her mother, brother and seven-year-old nephew.
But in an interview in The Oprah Winfrey Show that was broadcast recently, she discussed the source of the drive that quickly got her back on stage and in the recording studio just months after the tragedy.
“I try to do everything to say, ‘OK, will my mother like this? Will she be pleased? Will she be proud of that? How do I know she’s happy and she’s smiling down at me from heaven?”’ Hudson said.
“And that’s what I try to go by and walk by.”
Shedding tears, Hudson said she could hear the voices of her brother and mother telling her to “knock it off,” stop crying and keep going.
Hudson, 29, said she doesn’t know if she’s started to heal yet.
“It’s such a shocking thing,” she said. “It’s a lot to take in. It’s like, ‘OK, is this real? Did this really happen?’ It’s hard to put it in sync with reality.” Her son, born in August 2009, is a source of strength, she said, and “the cutest little baby in the whole wide world.”
Hudson performed her new single, Where You At, and talked about how she lost 80 pounds by resolving to get in shape after childbirth.