“I always say that one thing missing in cinema is that regular black woman,” observes Viola Davis in a new interview with The Guardian. “Not anyone didactic, or whose sole purpose in the narrative is to illustrate some social abnormality. There’s no meaning behind it, other than she is just there.” She adds, “I would love to have a black female ‘Klute,’ or ‘Kramer,’ or ‘Unmarried Woman,’ or ‘Annie Hall.’ But who’s gonna write it, who’s gonna produce it, who’s gonna see it, again and again and again?” The Oscar-winning “Fences” actress doesn’t hold back in the new profile. Full of insights about her decades in the industry and what it’s cost her, the actress and producer gets candid about why her starring role in “Widows,” a female-led caper, is such a big deal, the difficulties of collaborating with white men, and the pay gap between white women and women of color.
We’ve collected some of the highlights of the profile below.
On her sexy scene in the bedroom with Liam Neeson, who plays her husband in “Widows”: “For me, this is something you’ll not see this year, last year, the year before that. That is, a dark-skinned woman of color, at 53 years old, kissing Liam Neeson. Not just kissing a white man. Liam Neeson, a hunk. And kissing him sexually, romantically.”
How making “Widows” with Steve McQueen was different from working with some of the white, male directors she’s filmed with: “I get a gag order placed on me. They don’t want to see your liberation, they don’t want to see your mess – they don’t want to see you.”
Discussing the price she paid for trying to conform: “I was trying to fit in, stifling my voice, stifling who I was, in order to be seen as pretty, in order for people to like me. And then going home, not being able to sleep and having anxiety. I have found that the labeling of me, and having to fit into that box, has cost me a great deal. I’ve had a lot of lost years. [During that time, I did] a lot of things I didn’t believe in, in order to further my career. All the things I thought had great value haven’t served me. It’s been the whole hair thing. Even the weight thing, how I look in a dress, how I look on the red carpet. I’ve never been the beauty queen. Listen, when I was six years old, I lost the Miss Central Falls Recreation Contest – that was a beauty contest and I was in a bathing suit that I bought in the Salvation Army. Still, you hold on to the feeling of ‘Do people think I’m pretty?’ But pretty doesn’t have a value. Pretty didn’t serve me when I was grieving for my father when he passed away.”
On the dearth of roles — and fair pay — for women of color: “The Forbes list of the top 10 highest-paid actresses are all Caucasian. Some of them haven’t even done a film in the past year, and they’re still up there.”
Acknowledging the impact of #MeToo and Time’s Up: “The silence is just not acceptable any more. The old days of the ’50s, of hiding your feelings and your desires and your dreams behind vacuum cleaners and perfectly applied lipstick and wax floors – hell, no! I think #MeToo/Time’s Up has a lot to do with it. People may see flaws in it, but one beauty is that women are stepping into who they are.”
On whether Hollywood is giving black women more opportunities: “[If there has been any improvement,] it’s only because the black women that I know have taken it into their own hands [by producing and making change happen. Without them,] I would say no, it has not changed. I still find that we only exist within certain genres.”
“Widows” hits theaters November 16. Davis’ upcoming projects include a film about Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress, African female warrior story “The Woman King,” and “Small Great Things,” an adaptation of a Jodi Picoult novel about a black nurse in a legal battle with a white supremacist couple.
