“There is value to anger.”
Viola Davis reflected on her experience being a Black woman in Hollywood during a talk at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival …
#Cannes2022
Viola Davis reflected on her experience being a Black woman in Hollywood during a talk at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival …
#Cannes2022
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Short filmTranscript
00:00My anger, that six, eight-year-old Viola,
00:05is because I was running from a world that was spitting me out,
00:09that's what I felt,
00:12with the boys, and really a culture calling me that ugly black n***a.
00:18That what it motivated me to do is, yes, get out of my life,
00:22but what it also motivated me to do in my anger
00:26is to create a life that didn't spit any more Violas out.
00:42I don't care what anyone says, when you leave this life,
00:45you want everyone to know that you took up space in it.
00:49So how do you do that, despite the fact that,
00:53listen, at the end of the day, I grew up in a predominantly white community,
00:59I didn't feel adored, I didn't feel pretty,
01:02but despite all of those feelings, I still kept moving.
01:08I keep, you know, sprouting the quote from Anne Lamont,
01:13which is, all courage is, is fear said with prayers.
01:18That I'm very good with understanding that I have fear,
01:24understanding that I have anxiety, understanding that I have self-doubt,
01:28but it doesn't keep my feet and my spirit from moving forward.
01:34Any rejection that I've had, where people said that I was not pretty enough for a role,
01:40really gets on my damn nerves.
01:43It breaks my heart and it makes me angry.
01:51For many reasons.
01:54A lot of it is based in race. It really is.
01:59Because let's be honest, if I had my same features and I were five shades lighter,
02:05it would just be a little bit different.
02:09And if I had blonde hair, blue eyes, and even a wide nose,
02:13it would be even a little bit different than what it is now.
02:16We could talk about colorism, we could talk about race, it pisses me off.
02:20And it's broken my heart.
02:23I got the help. I got the Oscar nomination for the help.
02:29And then it was over, and then I thought, and now what?
02:33I was getting the same types of roles.
02:36Because how else are they going to cast a dark-skinned, black woman
02:41who is really not a model?
02:44So you're going to get three days here, two days there, two days there,
02:48and I had hit my bottom.
02:51And so I knew that then the only sort of position I could move into
02:57that gave me some sense of worth, and the only way to reconcile that anger
03:04was to find roles myself.
03:07That was my response to that.
03:10It was sort of a, excuse my language, a f*** it.
03:14And there is value to anger.
03:20There is value to a well-placed f*** it.
03:24Because with that burst, I feel like that burst represents
03:30that one moment of change.
03:33That after that, you can never be the same.
03:35You cannot be complacent afterwards.
03:38You've got to do something about the anger,
03:40because you don't want to go back there again.
03:43Why aren't you hiring a dark-skinned woman?
03:45When she walks in the room and you say she blows you away,
03:48then create space and storytelling for her.
03:52So when she thrives, she's not thriving despite of her circumstances.
03:57She's thriving because of the circumstances.
04:01Because in terms of storytelling that's expansive,
04:05that is as expansive as one's imagination, that's not happening yet.
04:10There's just certain genres and certain storytelling
04:13that when you're in a room as a producer,
04:16you have to really fight for those stories.
04:20Like if I wanted to play a mother whose son relived in a challenging neighborhood,
04:27and he was a gang member who died in a drive-by shooting,
04:31I could get that made.
04:34If I play the woman who was, I don't know,
04:37looking to recreate herself by, I don't know,
04:40flying to Nice and sleeping with five men at the age of 56 looking like me,
04:46I'm going to have a hard time pushing that one.
04:48Even as Viola Davis.
04:50Because people can't reconcile the blackness with spiritual awakening.
04:56And sexuality, it's too much.
05:01It's too much when you look like my maid Louise.
05:05And I say that because I actually had a director who did that to me.
05:09Who said, Louise!
05:11And I've known him for like 10 years and he called me Louise
05:14and I found out it was because his maid's name is Louise.
05:19So that has not changed.
05:21You have to understand when people give you affirmations growing up
05:25saying you can be anything, you can do whatever,
05:28you know you're beautiful, right?
05:30Oh, who told you you weren't beautiful?
05:32And then you don't see any examples of people who look like you
05:35who people are saying who are beautiful.
05:38You don't see that.
05:39That's a big thing with dark-skinned women.
05:41People like, don't listen to that.
05:44Do not listen to that, Viola.
05:46Dark-skinned women are beautiful too.
05:48And then you don't see any.
05:51There's no vision.
05:55Then you walk in the room and people don't really know that they're doing that
05:59because, you know, I'm sort of famous so people see me.
06:02But when people don't know who I am,
06:06it's interesting how invisible you get.
06:12You feel seen.
06:15You know, and that's why even with young black girls
06:19I'm really, really, really cognizant of this.
06:23Of always telling them that they're worth it and beautiful.
06:27First of all, because that's what I see.
06:29And that's what I know, that I know, that I know
06:32is the birthplace of everything.
06:35It's a birthplace of survival.
06:37It's a birthplace of self-love.
06:39It's a birthplace of keeping breath in your friggin' lungs.
06:43Even if you do mess up. I don't care.
06:45You're still worth it.
06:47You don't have to barter for it.
06:49You don't have to do anything for it.
06:51You don't have to be a certain weight.
06:53You don't have to do nothing. You're worth it.