Celebrity Mound

The ‘Dreamgirls’ star went to see fiance David Otunga fighting in a World Wrestling Entertainment match at the last minute, meaning she wasn’t at her family’s Chicago home when her mother Darnell Donerson, 57, and brother Jason Hudson, 29, were shot dead in October 2008.

Jennifer – who also lost her seven-year-old nephew Julian King in the grisly murder spree – told Ebony magazine: “That’s one of the things that saved my life. Because I could have been home with my mom then.

“[David] wanted me to come out to Florida with him instead of going to Chicago. I flew out to see him; that’s why I’m still here.

“I’ve never said that before, and I can’t believe I just said that now. But I didn’t know.

“He was just like, ‘I’m going to this wrestling thing and it’s in Tampa. I’m going out there now, so you can come out there and see me versus going home.’”

William Balfour – the estranged husband of Hudson’s sister Julia – has been charged with murdering Darnell and Jason.
Jennifer also revealed she and David had been planning “the biggest, grandest wedding ever” at the time of the tragic slaughter of her family, and she is still unsure as to whether she feels ready to set a date.

She added: “After that happened, I was like, ‘I don’t know what I want.’ A lot of things have happened in my life. There are a lot of things that I need to get adjusted to before I do anything else. That’s how I feel about it.”

She admitted her brother had been unsure about her plans to marry David at the time of his death.

Jennifer said: “My brother had the biggest issue with it. He cried. But I’m his baby sister, so of course he was going to have issues with it.

“The rest of the family would say, ‘Well, Jenny always seems to make the right decisions.’ I was being told this for a reason, so I thought, ‘We’re going to take our time’. Obviously, I listened.”

Jennifer Hudson has landed a $1 million-plus deal with Penguin Group’s Dutton imprint for her weight-loss memoir, sources say.

After it was reported that the Oscar winner and her William Morris agent Mel Berger wouldn’t settle for less than seven figures, they finalized a deal last week.

Sources told us publishers initially hesitated to fork over the high sum for a weight-loss tome that didn’t include Hudson’s personal issues, including the horrific murder of her family. Sources say Hudson has yet to write the book and will be crashing it for January 2012.

Jennifer’s husband David Otunga and their son

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She won’t say how much weight she lost, but singer/actress Jennifer Hudson will say that in the nine months she’s been a spokeswoman for Weight Watchers, she has never felt better.

Hudson is even singing about it in a new tune, “Feeling Good,” which is part of an ad campaign the dieting firm is launching on December 26 to coincide with its new nutritional PointsPlus program.

Weight Watchers said roughly 11 percent of its annual attendance at meetings takes place in January, as Americans look to atone for their holiday-related binges.

“Basically (the song) is the perfect way to describe this journey and how it’s left me feeling,” Hudson told Reuters. “If I could bottle everything inside me and tell others to help motivate them, then this is it.”

Hudson and her gospel-grounded voice found their place on Hollywood’s starmaking menu in 2004 when she was a finalist on “American Idol,” and further when she won an Oscar for her supporting role in the 2006 musical “Dreamgirls.” But in an industry obsessed with skinny women, Hudson has been challenged by her big size.

In April, Hudson announced she would become the new spokeswoman for Weight Watchers. It was about seven months after the birth of her son, David Jr., and at that time she had already lost some weight. By August, she told InStyle Makeover magazine she’d dropped to a size 6 from a size 16.

The company’s marketing chief, Cheryl Callan, called Hudson a great spokeswoman because people identify with her as a real woman who struggles with weight and eating issues, yet has found success in Hollywood.

Hudson blogs about her diet on Weight Watchers’ website, and she said that building a network of friends and a community of followers among the diet community gives her as much pleasure as losing weight has.

“That goes back to why I did the song,” Hudson said. “I know so many people out there who are on the same path. Anything I can do to help them along, that motivates me, and inspires me.”

Yet, Hudson said she is still grappling with knowing herself in her thinner frame. She said she still feels like the same woman, but is aware that people now view her differently.

“It’s almost like there is a new person, but there is still the question of how do I want to represent myself, how do I want to be perceived,” she said.

She knows one thing, however, she is sticking to Weight Watchers in the new year. She has embraced its new PointsPlus program, which does away with calorie counting and assigns points to foods based on their overall nutritional value.

The new program favors foods that more easily convert to energy that is used, create a sense of satisfaction and encourage the consumption of natural foods versus those with added sugar and fat.

“It’s one thing to lose weight,” said Hudson, “but it’s another thing to eat healthy.”

Jennifer Hudson teams up with Weight Watchers for its third annual Lose For Good campaign to help fight two interrelated epidemics- hunger and obesity on September 15, 2010 in New York City. Through October 23rd, as the Weight Watchers Community loses weight and participates in other activities, the company will donate up to $1 million to two leading hunger fighting organizations – Share Our Strength and Action Against Hunger.