Jennifer Hudson To Play Winnie Mandela Jennifer Hudson, the former American Idol contestant who won the oscar in her first screen role in "Dreamgirls," is ready for her next challenge. Hudson will star in “Winnie,” a drama that casts her as the former wife of South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela. Hudson will play Winnie Mandela in a film that begins production May 30 in the South African locations of Johannesburg, Capt Town, and the Transkei and Robben Island where the future president spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. “Winnie” will be directed by Darrell J. Roodt, the veteran South African filmmaker whose 2006 film “Yesterday” was Africa’s Best Foreign Film nominee, and who also directed “Cry, The Beloved Country,” and “Sarafina!” Andre Pieterse, Roodt and Paul L. Johnson wrote a script based on the Anne Marie du Preez Bezdrob biography “Winnie Mandela:A Life.” Picture is being made with South African and Canadian money, with Pieterse producing with Michael...