Whoopi Goldberg Credits Maggie Smith For Helping Her Cope With Her Mother’s Aneurysm: “Just Having Somebody Who Got It, Who Understood, It’s Everything”

Whoopi Goldberg will always have a friend in Dame Maggie Smith.

Goldberg opened up to People about how her Sister Act co-star was there for her after she discovered her mother was put on life support in the wake of an aneurysm, which she also recalls in her new memoir Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me.

“Having Maggie Smith be there, and being able to fall apart and having her say, ‘Listen, my friend. We’ll get you through this. We’ll get you through this. We’ll get you to the hospital so you can get her. Get you back to Berkeley so you can get home,'” she recalled to the outlet.

Goldberg had received word from her brother, Clyde K. Johnson, when she was performing in London in a stage adaptation of Sister Act, per People. According to the outlet, Smith had been visiting that day. She shared that they “were up all night, just laughing and talking about stuff.”

“And she had met my mom a couple of times,” she added. “Just having somebody who got it, who understood, it’s everything.”

Goldberg’s new memoir details the lives of her mother, Emma Harris, who died in 2010, and her brother, Clyde K. Johnson, who died in 2015. In the book, Goldberg recounts spending five hours with Smith while telling her memories about them, per People. In an excerpt from the memoir shared by Business Insider, Goldberg called Smith “a magnificent woman.”

“I don’t know if I was in shock. I had never been in shock before. I don’t think I cried. I didn’t feel anything except a big wave of kindness from Maggie,” she penned. “I’ve got to say, she is one of those people for whom I would do anything. Anything Maggie Smith needs, I got her covered.”

Goldberg promoted her memoir on The View last Wednesday (May 1), and shared that her mother had undergone “shock treatments” while hospitalized for a “nervous breakdown,” which caused her to forget her and her brother when Goldberg was only about eight years old.

“There was a time in this country where your husband or your brother or any man involved in your life could make medical decisions for you, so my mother’s father — my grandfather — and my dad OK’d it,” she explained. “They OK’d that my mother get the shock treatment for two years.”

As for Smith and Goldberg’s friendship, Goldberg stopped by the British talk show Loose Women in January 2023, where she said she was “holding the part of Mother Superior” for Smith in Sister Act 3, per Entertainment Weekly. While the project was announced back in 2020, Goldberg told People in March that a third film is “still on the way” and that they are “still in the process of writing the script.”