Viola Davis spoke to The Telegraph about her starring role inMa Raineys Black Bottomand reflected on the first time she saw the August Wilson play when she was worked as an usher at a theater during college.
Davis, 55, was recently nominated for aGolden Globe Awardunder the Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama category for Netflixs Ma Raineys Black Bottom.
Davis told The Telegraphs film critic Robbie Collin that she paid her way through theater schoolat Rhode Island College and later at The Julliard School in New York City. She recalled ushering one night and watching the theaters onstage adaptation of Ma Raineys Black Bottom and almost stopped breathing.
It was like I was watching a famous singer that I loved in private, even though I didnt even know who Ma Rainey was at all, Davis said.
The How to Get Away with Murder actor went on to say that when she was a student at Julliard, she never performed any plays by Wilson,who famously wrote a cycle of 10 shows about African-Americans in the 20th century, all but one of which were set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The award-winning star said that this was largely because her graduating class at the time didnt have enough Black students to cast in the shows.
I cant say that Im not appreciative of my training there, but I did not find a sense of belonging. It was a place that taught classical, Eurocentric theatre as if it was the Bible and for me, as a chocolate, kinky-haired girl, there was no way in, Davis said.
She continued: To perform in Shakespeare, or George Bernard Shaw, or Eugene ONeill, I felt like what was required of me was to make any hint of my Blackness disappear, that it would somehow be a good thing if the audience could forget I was Black.
Davis went on to win a Tony Award for her performance in Wilsons King Hedley II, and an Academy Award for her role in the2016 film adaptation of Wilsons Fences,among many other accolades for her performances in The Help and How to Get Away with Murder.
She also told The Telegraph that she thinks dark-skinned Black women do not have the same freedoms as white actresses in the film industry.
There is still a sense that a woman has to look a certain way and be a certain age in order to be sexual on screen. And if those rules are broken, theyre broken for white actresses only. And theyre wonderful white actresses Meryl Streep in Hope Springs, or Diane Keaton in Somethings Gotta Give. But I dont feel like that same freedom has been extended to black women, especially dark-skinned black women. I simply dont see it, Davis said.
As The Telegraph reported, Davis next role is as the executive producer forFirst Ladies,a Showtime series in which shell play Michelle Obama.