Viola Davis has made history and will continue to make history this awards season. She is now the most-Oscar-nominated African-American woman in the history of the Academy. She’s the first African-American woman to win five SAG Awards. It’s pretty much a certainty that she’ll win the Best Supporting Actress Oscar too. So what else does Viola have going on? Well, she’s about to star in a film about white supremacists.
Viola Davis and Julia Roberts are starring in a movie version of Jodi Picoult’s novel “Small Great Things” for Amblin Partners. The attachment of Davis comes a day after she won a SAG Award for best supporting actress for “Fences.”
“Small Great Things” centers on a labor/delivery nurse who takes care of newborns at a Connecticut hospital who’s ordered not touch the baby of a white supremacist couple. When the baby dies in her care, she’s then taken to court by the couple.
I’ve never read a Jodi Picoult book in my life, so I had to look up the story to see if Variety’s summary was on-point. So, it seems like Viola will be playing the nurse who gets sued and Julia Roberts will play the lawyer defending her. It seems like an interesting story and like it will be another showcase for Viola’s talents, honestly.
Speaking of Viola and telling stories about people other than white folks, Viola spoke a bit at the SAG Awards about inclusion in storytelling and whether this year’s diverse nominations were a signal that #OscarsSoWhite is over. Viola said:
“There’s a lot of typecasting — age, sex, color, dark-skinned, light-skinned. Response to OscarSoWhite? No. I think that every nominee from Naomie Harris to Octavia Spencer to ‘Hidden Figures’ to ‘Fences’ to ‘Moonlight’ to Mahershala Ali are up there because they deserve to be there. They’re not there because of the color of their skin. They put in the work. So the answer to that is no.”
“February 27 is gonna come, and now what? Is it just going to be a trend to talk about inclusion — and I’d rather say inclusion than diversity — or is it going to be a norm that we’re all part of the narrative, that all of our stories deserve to be told, and that art indeed has to reflect life and our culture? And people are going to demand it. We’re not ‘The Brady Bunch’ anymore. We’re ‘Black-ish.’ We’re ‘Fresh Off the Boat.’ We’re ‘Jane the Virgin.’ We’re ‘Stranger Things.’ We’re a hodgepodge of races and sexes and sexualities. I saw an absence of women who look like me on TV eight years ago. And to tell you the truth, we’re still sort of absent in leading roles, especially if you’re darker than a paper bag.”
Viola never fails to impress me, you know? She could have just taken her SAG Award and thanked the people she needed to thank, but she made her acceptance speech about telling diverse stories and then afterwards, she was talking about colorism in how projects are being cast. She’s amazing.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
SPEAK ON IT LADY V!! *Keep The Black Excellence Coverage going at least all month!* I will go ahead and believe the words and experiences of a Grown as Woman at the pinnacle of her game with respect to her profession, Yes I will!
She really is a queen and every single time she speaks something great emerges. We are blessed.
So glad she is speaking the truth about Colorism which many people try to deny by saying “but White Folks don’t see shades of Black/Brown! We all look the same to them!”. Sure Jan, it just “magically” happens that every Black, Latino, Hispanic, Indian WOMAN hired is light-skined, Biracial, or has European facial features and hair.
Even Black films, BET, and Latino channels do colorism casting. Remember Straight Out of Compton? And it’s always specifically applies to WOC. They have no problems with dark skinned men whom are seen culturally as desirable (tall, dark and handsome stereotype).
But Dark skinned Black, Indian, and Hispanic/Latinos are too far from the female beauty standard of “the lighter the more beautiful”: light skin, light hair color, light eye color. This is why even White women bleach their hair blonde as soon as they get to Hollywood!
This!!! All of this!
In the last decade I’ve grown to really appreciate her. With a lot of actresses, I can’t suspend belief to really buy them in whatever role they’re in. Viola sucks me in every time!
She really is so, soooo good at what she does.
She is incredible at every level (and hopefully Meryl can learn a bit from her about intersectional feminism!). If she doesn’t win Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars I am going to throw a high holy fit!!
Love her!
I bought Small Great Things for an airplane read last fall and couldn’t get past the first quarter of the book. I might try to read it again. Sometimes I like Jodi Picoult’s books and sometimes they annoy me.
I feel the same way about her books. I’ve read a few reviews on this one and they’re mixed but, that said, if anyone can give Ruth (the nurse) depth and life, it’s Viola. She’s such an amazing actress.
me too. i liked plain truth but couldn’t get through another one that i tried so i stopped.
I lover her! That’s all…
She is, sadly, not wrong. She’s broken through — and not easily, I’d add — but it doesn’t feel like they’re letting many follow her. That these degrees of color-ism still exist within the larger, gross bounds of general racism is … Well, let’s just say we’ve got a long, LONG way to go before we can even say we’re halfway there, let alone that these toxic ideas have been eradicated. So, march on, Viola, and keep blazing that path.
Regarding Hidden Figures, I think it is a good film and it is great that the film is doing so well. However, i think it was confusing to white people why they had never heard the story. One of my white friends said she wanted to see it and asked if it was a true story. I said yes and told her that the actual main character was very fair and I wasn’t sure if she recognized her as black. Then I found an article on the 2015 medal of freedom story from CBS and there was no mention that Katherine G. Johnson was black just that she was an American.
Why this story? Because sometimes we forget that black or african american is a cultural construct and does not actually reflect the color of someone’s skin. Next year they are doing the Thurgood Marshall story and the actor playing him, looks nothing like him but he is culturally black. Sometimes, we have to find ways to push the social construct to make stories where the actor should be fairer to show how messed up that time in history was and how messed up we still are.
Sometimes it matters when films are based on history because people take it for an actual history lesson.
Interestingly, she clearly looks black/mixed race to me on pictures when she was younger, but not really on recent pictures, I think it’s partially the hair but very interesting how our perceptions can change. In any way, what an impressive person and Taraji P. Henson portrayed her beautifully! I was so happy that she got her happy ending both professionally and personally!
I have a few family members who in their younger years were very dark black but as they grow older they lose melanin. Not only in their skin, but hair and eyes as well.
My grandfather now has grayish eyes with blue rims, it’s really weird. That and his skin has become lighter and ashen looking and his hair is white as snow.
I see it in myself as well. But, yes there were definitely colorism involved where darker blacks were shut out of higher education. Look up blue vein society.
I was too dark for the light-skinned girls and too light for the dark-skinned girls growing up. I was made fun of all the time and people would ask me (even teachers!) “What are you mixed with?” It can be a really strange thing for women of color to not only be disliked because of their color but considered less beautiful or worthy because of their SHADE.
I can’t wait to watch her win an Oscar. She’s such a talented and amazing woman, on screen and off.
She’s one of my all time favourites.
I will never not love this woman. Never!
I love her so much! She is women who faced so much in her life and worked very hard to be where she is today. She does this all without forgetting where she came from and doesn’t have the illusion that because she is working in Hollywood as black women it means that it is easy for all or that Hollywood is not still very racist, sexist, and on and on. There are very few roles in which the person of color is just a person and not the black loud friend, or the hispanic thug, or the Middle Eastern guy with the heavy accent. If there is a show about a black or hispanic family the show is how different they are from white people or they play up every stereo type they can in order for a laugh. I hope that one day we can get to a day when the people on tv and movies are just people. This election I hope has opened the eyes of many of how far our country still needs to go and how many people are still very much racist, sexist, and bigots.
She is my idol. Such an amazing inspiring woman. I love her!
Yes Viola, speak it loud so the ones who participate in this type of colorism shrivel in their seats!
Love Viola! She’s the best kind of grown up.
Love her. Great in every way.
the famous paper bag test. In the 60’s my mother wasn’t allowed in certain black clubs because she was darker than the paper bag.
I’m glad she’s talking about it!