Whoopi Goldberg Might Be Playing April O’Neil’s Boss

Yesterday our world spun with the news that something half-way interesting was actually happening on the set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Ninja Turtles or whatever it winds up calling itself. Which is to say that Whoopi Goldberg, previously not considered to be connected to the movie in any way, shape, or form, was on set. With no casting announcement to go on, speculation immediately began as to who the actress might be playing.

Comic Book Movie thinks it has the answer.

According to their source, so take this with a grain of salt, “Whoopi Goldberg (“Ghost”) will be playing Bernadette Thompson, an editor at Channel 6 News and more importantly, April O’Neil (Megan Fox) and Vernon Fenwick’s (Will Arnett) boss.”

At this point you’re probably asking whether Bernadette Thompson is even a TMNT character, and I’ll just let you know here, so that you don’t have to go look it up, like I did. Technically there’s no Bernadette Thompson, but in the 1987 cartoon series and in the Archie Comics TMNT series that was initially based on the same series, there is a Burne Thompson, who, indeed, is April O’Neil and Vernon Fenwick’s prickly, Jonah Jameson-esque boss.

In other words, this might be fandom’s least notable genderswapped, racebent character in a while. If officially confirmed, I’ll also be leavening some points in the movie’s favor for committing, in at least this small way, to increasing the diversity of its cast. If officially confirmed, undoubtedly it’ll have some die hard fans, somewhere up in arms. But as Voltaire once said: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.”

(via Comic Book Movie.)