00:00Every time people see something big on screen, they always say it's overacting.
00:04I think that's bull. It's not. There's some big moments in life. Sorry, there are.
00:09Hi, I'm Viola Davis, and I'll be looking at a few scenes from my career.
00:30They would have maybe eight, nine dudes in the gym, and then we would choreograph fight scenes where I would have to take all of them down.
00:50That was the training for three months, five hours a day, an hour of weight training, half an hour of running, 10.0 on the treadmill.
01:01Get in the car and go for three hours, sometimes three and a half hours of hand-to-hand combat, little jujitsu.
01:08I felt like I created a body that wasn't just a sort of amalgamation of male desirability, but a body that was fit to take care of myself.
01:27It gave me a confidence. Let me tell you something, the leather sort of shield that I wore in the movie.
01:33Now, I don't walk around like that in my life. I've never walked around, and I'm 57 years old in this, and then my stomach out and all of that.
01:42I walked with confidence on that set, and not because I felt like I look good. I felt the confidence of strength.
01:51It never occurred to me as a girl that I could be strong until I did this movie.
01:57There is a narrative with women that in order to be feminine, in order to be women, you sort of have to be a little weak.
02:07And I was in this world where it was about being capable, being a warrior.
02:16It awakened autonomy and agency.
02:28I remember we did that scene so many times because she, it's not because, but she runs off, and she's about 20 years younger than I am.
02:37So she ran, she runs off. She ran so fast. I would run after her, and I think there was a couple of takes.
02:44I tripped. I skinned my knee. There was blood. I wiped myself off. I got back up.
02:52The swimming, now I'm not really a swimmer. I can't believe I was swimming in this.
02:58We even had to train, train for swimming by taking bricks and going down into a pool that must have been 15 feet deep.
03:06Yeah, that was that. It was badass.
03:15I am concerned about the relationship between Father Flynn and your son.
03:20You don't say concerned. What do you mean concerned?
03:23That it may not be right.
03:27Mrs. Miller was this woman, of course, who has a son in Catholic school, black, and he could be gay.
03:36This priest has taken a liking to him, and has become his mentor.
03:40I mean, there's nothing so far-fetched with that that it seems like it's not realistic.
03:47I didn't understand why she would leave him there.
03:50Because I didn't understand this character is why I wrote a 100-page biography.
03:55And I remember I kept writing and writing and writing.
03:58And that's what you do as an actor.
03:59That's what they say.
04:00You can't arm yourself with enough information.
04:03So I kept writing and writing and writing until someone said,
04:06maybe she didn't have a choice.
04:08And it was like, pow.
04:10What if she's in a situation at home?
04:13Maybe it's a little abusive.
04:14She's a woman in 1964.
04:16She has no other means to protect her son.
04:19And then, all of a sudden, I understood her.
04:21That if this is the only place where my son could survive,
04:25then why not keep him exactly where he is with a man who at least loves him?
04:31So it took me 100 pages to find that little small truth.
04:36This man is in my school.
04:37Well, he's gotta be somewhere.
04:38Maybe he's doing some good, too.
04:39He is after the boys.
04:40Well, maybe some of them boys wanna get caught.
04:45Listen, I was terrified working with Meryl Streep.
04:49I mean, I know she would hate hearing me say that.
04:52She is not that human being or actor at all.
04:55But I said, I gotta step up.
04:57And we shot this in two weeks.
05:00This one scene that takes, I don't know, eight minutes?
05:03And then we actually reshot it again for another week.
05:08That also is what motivated 100 pages, because I said,
05:11if she's great, I gotta be just as good,
05:14because she ain't not gonna make me look bad.
05:27I need for a character to be a human being.
05:38I don't know any way into acting if someone is not a human being.
05:43If I did not take the makeup off, then I thought that for the next six,
05:49five, ten years that this show is on,
05:52it's gonna constantly be about me masking my age,
05:56about me trying to be pretty,
05:58about just ignoring the fact that I don't know how to walk in heels.
06:02And I just felt like, what if you took that wig off,
06:06and they had to deal with that black woman
06:09who was underneath the eyelashes and the makeup?
06:14Then it would be, they would have to write for her.
06:18And I have never seen her.
06:21And to a certain extent, I think that's a huge reason
06:24why I've never seen myself.
06:26Miss Tyson said that when she was the first black woman on network TV,
06:30she said she would get a boatload,
06:32and she kept saying that word, boatload of mail,
06:35every single week from black people saying,
06:38how dare you do that?
06:40Why did you have them, you know, use your natural hair?
06:46I mean, the shame of blackness came from us.
06:50That is why people lean into art.
06:54It's truth.
06:55It's seeing yourself.
06:56It's feeling less alone.
06:58And it's the bravery to be able to do that.
07:02And this is my chance to redefine what it meant to be a leading lady,
07:06what it meant to be black, what it meant to be sexual,
07:10what it meant to be all of that.
07:11This was my chance to do that.
07:13It's not easy for me to admit that I've been standing in the same place for 18 years.
07:25Well, I've been standing with you.
07:27I've been right here with you, Troy.
07:29I got a life too.
07:31I gave 18 years of my life to stand in the same spot as you.
07:35What I remember about Denzel is him giving me permission to go there.
07:40The problem I had with this at first was I said, it's such a, because it's a rant.
07:46It's a huge, long monologue.
07:48And she is definitely, her whole life has been, you know, ripped away from her.
07:54So I was like, it's too big for her.
07:57It's too big for the screen.
07:59And he was like, oh, okay, let's do it.
08:02And then I think we started, we did this, by the way, I forgot, over a dozen times.
08:09So I did it.
08:11And he was like, it's not too big to me.
08:14I took all my feelings, my wants and needs and dreams, and I buried them inside you.
08:20I planted a seed and watched and prayed over.
08:22I planted myself inside you and waited to bloom.
08:25For film, everything is small.
08:27The camera's right there, whatever.
08:29But there are some moments in life that if you saw them, they're big moments.
08:36What this moment was, was one of those moments where a woman was literally like a feral dog,
08:45who literally was getting her life ripped from underneath her.
08:49It was not a tiny movie moment.
08:52It was likened to a Greek tragedy.
08:54Every time people see something big on screen, they always say it's overacting.
08:58I think that's bull.
08:59It's not.
09:00There's some big moments in life.
09:02Sorry, there are.
09:03He is the best actor's director, by the way, that's out there.
09:14Michael will get a percentage of the revenue of the sale of each shoe that is sold.
09:19I'm sorry?
09:23Not all Nike shoes, just the ones with his name on them.
09:26Phone scenes are horrific.
09:28They're absolutely horrific.
09:30I'm just talking.
09:31I'm talking.
09:32I'm not thinking about anything else.
09:35This phone scene had a whole arc to it.
09:39And I don't think that I would have gotten this if Matt were not on the phone.
09:44When someone is talking on the phone and everything they're saying is bullshit to you.
09:53So you put the phone down and you may put it on mute.
09:56I may say something to someone in the room saying,
09:58can you believe what he's saying?
10:00It's some bullshit.
10:01Those moments that nobody wants to cop to.
10:05I had an opportunity to do even that,
10:07which informed the scene in a whole different way.
10:10when I take the phone away from my ear and go,
10:12okay, I'm going to let him say whatever he wants to say.
10:15Because at the end of it, I'm going to get what the hell I want.
10:19This scene, it was the most frightening of it all.
10:42Because it was a performance within a performance.
10:45The only thing I remember is being terrified.
10:48And I remember Chadwick in this scene because he was so dedicated to learning the trumpet.
10:54And he was so specific with it, like day and night.
10:58And so I remember in this that I felt like I had to step up.
11:02Because he was stealing the spotlight.
11:04That's what was happening in the scene.
11:06You know, probably mirroring life.
11:10You know, you know, you know.
11:16Very little information about her.
11:18Like a lot of black people from this time period.
11:22She's described as having a mouth full of gold teeth.
11:26And when she sang in the Chitlin circuit shows under the hot lights,
11:31her makeup would melt like grease paint.
11:35They described her as ugly.
11:36I think that when people hear ugly and someone describing how someone looks,
11:42then they're so offended that they do the opposite with their acting.
11:46They say, I don't care if you said she was ugly.
11:48I'm going to make her beautiful.
11:50But then she no longer becomes who she is.
11:54For me, what intrigued me about Ma Rainey was a chance to honor her exactly as who she was.
12:01And very often I don't get to play that.
12:11Look like they're guarding the doors more than us.
12:13Ah, ridiculous.
12:14It's just ridiculous.
12:15I'm meant to be bagging down those doors by now.
12:18What about the cat team?
12:20That first explosion came from the east wing in that honeymoon suite.
12:24If I was taking down this party, that cat team would be my primary target.
12:28I like this scene because I like it when you don't see something coming.
12:35This scene starts, she's at the G20 summit.
12:38The whole thing is she wants other leaders to be on board with this together plan.
12:44She is being the negotiator.
12:46She is the leader of the free world basically.
12:49And then this happens.
12:52And I remember even shooting this scene where I was like, oh my God.
12:56Because I'm in the red dress.
12:58Everything is happening.
12:59All of a sudden I get to play the president who is challenged with this whole other area
13:06of having to step up as a leader.
13:08Some of these scenes we choreographed a week before, a day before.
13:13I think the most challenging choreography was the elevator scene.
13:17That elevator scene was hard only because it was in close confines.
13:20It was, you know, falling down the elevator shaft.
13:23And I love fight scenes.
13:27Six year old Viola loves fight scenes.
13:29Six year old Viola always wanted to beat up the boys.
13:32I'm not going to lie.
13:33I mean, if you read my book, I was a mischievous kid and I'm being nice.
13:39Thank you, Vanity Fair, and thank you everyone for watching.
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