Colorism is one of Hollywood’s biggest downfalls. In a very vain industry, even the most talented performers get dismissed based on their looks. One performer this has happened to is Viola Davis. When speaking with the New York Times about her forthcoming memoir, Finding Me, the How To Get Away With Murder star spoke on her journey to accepting the role of Annalise Keating.
Following her roles in Doubt, The Help, and Fences, Davis was “47 and terrified” to tackle such a job. Shonda Rhimes, the show’s executive producer, admitted that Davis was the team’s “dream choice.” The Times added, “Before the series, Davis’s biggest roles had been strong, tough, sharp but sexually neutered women, as if the deepness of her skin tone and her sensuality were inversely correlated.” Racial criticism was so prominent that even fellow Black actors, both male and female, believed she wasn’t “pretty enough to pull off” a leading role.
Prior to her role on the hit ABC primetime drama, casting directors also felt Davis was “too dark” and “not classically beautiful” enough to portray a romantic lead. This caused her to ensure that the HTGAWM writers included the groundbreaking scene of her removing her wig and makeup.
“The TV and film business is saturated with people who think they’re writing something human when it’s really a gimmick,” she writes in the memoir. “But if I took the wig off in a brutal, private moment and took off the makeup, it would force them to write for THAT woman.”
Following that season, Davis took home an Emmy for her performance. Moments like this led to Davis’ creation of The Woman King—a film that took six years to begin production as studios were reluctant to back a project featuring so many dark-skinned Black women across the diaspora. “The Woman King reflected all of the things that the world told me were limiting: Black women with crinkly, curly hair who were darker than a paper bag, who were warriors,” the 56-year-old expressed.
When wrapping the film, she told her cast and crew, “The thing about what we do is that you can be transported back in time. You can be whoever you want to be. And, you know, for Black people, sometimes the only thing we’ve had to rely on is our imaginations. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls the butterfly. We’ve been so misunderstood. Limited, invisible for so long. And now, people are going to see us be butterflies.”
The actress first realized her passion for acting upon seeing Cicely Tyson portray Jane Pittman as her family watched The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in her youth. “My heart stopped beating. It was like a hand reached for mine, and I finally saw my way out,” she writes in the memoir.
Finding Me will be released on April 26 but Davis’ Netflix special with Oprah will premiere first April 22.