Pod Insights Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso The Many Lives of Viola Davis About this episode Before Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder) became an EGOT-winning actor, she was an observer. Her work takes the human experience and transmutes it, offering a mirror and a window into ourselves.
Today, we sit to unpack her recent, liberating projects in The Woman King https://www.amazon.com/Woman-King-Viola-Davis/dp/B0B8Q3DQPX (4:24) and G20 https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.ce18124f-5eb6-431a-b5d3-41ba43d8ce55?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb (4:50), the formative years she spent growing up in Rhode Island (13:52), and how she captured those familial memories in her 2022 memoir Finding Me (17:12). Then, we talk about Viola’s start as a performer (23:40), what she learned attending Juilliard (31:57), and the quagmire she faced as a Black actor emerging on Broadway and in Hollywood post-graduation (35:10).
On the back-half, Davis reflects on a scene from August Wilson’s play Seven Guitars (37:50), her singular experience acting alongside Meryl Streep in Doubt https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.0aabfbe6-e2b7-8098-3c28-bfba82736fba?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb (47:25), and the ways her life transformed during Shonda Rhymes’ How to Get Away with Murder https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.a2b90a83-2901-66bb-ef3c-77d710dec77b?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb and Steve McQueen’s Widows https://www.amazon.com/Widows-Steve-McQueen/dp/B07KLCY319 (53:00). To close, Viola shares her views on legacy (1:01:05) and how she finds her way back home, each and every day (1:05:20).
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Transcript 10,852 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:02 Speaker 00 Lemonada.
0:21 Sam Fragoso? This is Talk Easy. I'm Stan Fragoso. Welcome to the show.
0:38 Sam Fragoso? Today, actor and producer Viola Davis. She's one of 21 people with an EGOT: an Emmy for How to Get Away with Murder, a Grammy for her memoir Finding Me, an Oscar for her supporting turn in Fences, and a Tony Award for the same play written by August Wilson. But before she was an award winner, she was just an observer. And as the first Black family to live in Central Falls, Rhode Island, Davis saw everything. There was a lot to observe: love, pain, poverty, abuse, addiction, joy.
1:17 Sam Fragoso? Like a Viola Davis performance itself, her upbringing had a lot of notes and shades. It was not one thing. Maybe it never is. Davis's work is equally hard to pin down. How do you articulate greatness, anyway? How do you explain what she does in films like Doubt, or Widows, or The Woman King? You can't, and so I won't. But I will give you her words. They weren't about herself, but Meryl Streep, who at the time was receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Golden Globes. "She sees you," said Davis, describing Meryl, "and like a high-powered scanning machine, she's recording you."
2:02 Speaker 02 She is an observer and a thief. She waits to share what she has stolen on that sacred place, which is the screen. She makes the most heroic characters vulnerable, the most known, familiar, the most despised, relatable. Dame Streep. Her artistry reminds us of the impact of what it means to be an artist, which is to make us feel less alone.
2:31 Sam Fragoso? Hearing that again, that's about as good of a description of what Davis does as I could come up with. An observer and a thief who takes human experience and then transmutes it, offering a mirror and a window into ourselves. And so today, Viola and I talk through her creative process, which is invariably informed by lived experience, both hers and others. We also get into her latest film, G20, in which she plays US President Daniel Sutton. We talk about her formative years, growing up in Rhode Island, what she learned from
3:11 Sam Fragoso? her time at Juilliard, and how her memoir, Finding Me, was a bridge between the many lives she's lived. This is Viola Davis.
3:39 Sam Fragoso? Viola Davis.
3:39 Speaker 02 Yes.
3:40 Sam Fragoso? Thank you for being here.
3:41 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thank you for having me.
3:43 Sam Fragoso? We're in the Actors Equity Building.
3:45 Speaker 02 Oh, my goodness. This is where I would come every year to do my taxes. But the reason why I came to the Actors Equity Building is they would do your taxes for free.
3:55 Sam Fragoso? Oh, really?
3:56 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm. So I'd get here at 4 o'clock in the morning, sleep in front of that damn door, get my taxes done and mail it.
4:02 Sam Fragoso? Now, you got your Actors Equity Card after doing Joe Turner's Come and Gone, right?
4:07 Speaker 02 That's right. I became a professional actress.
4:10 Sam Fragoso? Well, I think you were 23 at the time?
4:12 Speaker 02 23.
4:13 Sam Fragoso? Okay. So the building has... Good, but mostly sleepy memories is what I'm hearing. So let's try to create a better, more lasting memory today. Around your last big action hero film, The Woman King.
4:28 Speaker 02 Yes.
4:29 Sam Fragoso? You said the story, quote, "resuscitated you. I'm dark-skinned, I have a deep voice, and my whole life I've been told that I'm too strong, too masculine. We redefine what it means to be feminine in The Woman King, and it liberated me."
4:45 Speaker 02 Yes.
4:46 Sam Fragoso? Is it from that liberation that you felt, well, the only role to play after The Woman King is the President of the United States?
4:58 Speaker 02 It wasn't intentional. I think that people see your career so much as intentional. And what that would mean is that you have so much control over your work. And there are no words to describe the business of acting.
5:12 Sam Fragoso? We're gonna need some words.
5:14 Speaker 02 Yes, well, 95% unemployment rate. 1% of actors make $50,000 a year or more. Usually, those are background actors. And only 0.04% of actors are famous. You don't get control over your material. Every once in a while, you have an actor out there, maybe the Leonardo DiCaprio's, you know, who could go out there and say, "I want to work with this director." But usually with the rest of us, it's you're on a wing and a prayer.
5:42 Sam Fragoso? Right.
5:43 Speaker 02 But the thing about this profession, because there's so much deprivation, you always want to figure out what to do in order to work. So a lot of people copy everyone else's hairstyle. They copy everyone else's body. You know, all the women out there trying to lose weight. Maybe they get plastic surgery, who knows? But very few people sort of relish in exactly who they are.
6:10 Sam Fragoso? And do you relish in that?
6:11 Speaker 02 I have to. I don't know how to be anyone else. And yes, was I liberated from everything that makes you or defines you as feminine? Yes, for the woman king. But I've been liberated by everything that defined me as being anything. I feel like I define me. Totally. I don't want any limits on me, my sexuality, my voice, what I can and can't do, at what age. I refuse to limit myself. I think that's where progressiveness comes in. That person is willing to step out on faith and do what it is that they're called to do.
6:50 Sam Fragoso? You said that in making this movie, that not every film I make has to win an Academy Award.
6:57 Speaker 02 Oh, God, yes.
6:58 Sam Fragoso? But are you sure the Academy should overlook the scene where you shoot someone in the foot, punch him in the face, all while in a red dress?
7:10 Speaker 02 Let me tell you something. I do need an award for that damn red dress. Listen, you know what?
7:15 Sam Fragoso? That's the last joke question I'll ask you.
7:18 Speaker 02 No, you got, we got to have some laughs. I mean, this is, this has been, I mean, that's one of the reasons why I did the movie, too. I want people to be able to get together with their families at home and watch the movie in the same way they commit to Air Force One, Die Hard, Sigourney Weaver in Alien. I want them to commit to me. And I don't think that that is a bad thing. I don't think that, you know, every movie I make has to make a grand statement even. I think sometimes it needs to just be pure entertainment.
7:51 Sam Fragoso? Well, I was thoroughly entertained. You made this film through your production company.
7:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:57 Sam Fragoso? And the mission statement of the company is to, quote, "Change the landscape. It's hard for people to see us beyond the narratives that are didactic. We're trying to change that." So tell me, how does G20 fit into that mission statement? What, what, what does change look like to you and your production company?
8:16 Speaker 02 First of all, because I'm the lead in a movie.
8:18 Sam Fragoso? Yeah.
8:18 Speaker 02 I'm 59 years old and I play the President of the United States with my body, my Skin tone, my face, and the people in the movie reflect the audience. I'm the center of the narrative. Then you have Ramon Rodriguez, you have Patricia Rigan, who is Mexican. Guadalajara, who's directing it, it reflects the audience. You know, so often I don't think that we understand. It's like, I did a movie one time years ago and my husband, we went to see it in a movie theater. He said, you were the only black person in that town. Even when we looked in the background in the hardware store that you were at, there was no one black, brown or nothing.
9:00 Speaker 02 But a lot of times, movies do not reflect the world. And, you know, once I got to a certain level, then I needed to be the change that I wanted to see. You know, it's like that saying, you know, once you're free, it's your job to free others. And there is no closet in the studios filled with scripts for young African American actresses, for, for older African American actresses, for any actress of color, they're not there. And so if you don't create them, then what you have is maybe actresses who do one really great movie.
9:44 Speaker 02 And then they sit around for another year or two, until maybe they find something else. I don't think that people understand the deprivation there is in material. And it's the material that pops you.
9:58 Sam Fragoso? So in this scene that people are about to hear, your character, President Sutton, is negotiating with a group of attackers, attempting to destabilize the world economy and corner the market on cryptocurrency.
10:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:13 Sam Fragoso? Odd timing for us to play this scene. Your character speaks first.
10:18 Speaker 03 Why would a mercenary take on the J twenty? What? Wait. You, you call me a mercenary? Lady, you fought a war over gasoline. I served my country just as I serve it now. Yeah, blindly. You serve it blindly. You were used by them then, and they're using you now. So you feel used? That's why you terrorize a world and crash markets? We want to switch to cryptocurrency, so that. Oh shit. This isn't about crypto. You want to crash currencies to get rich?
10:47 Speaker 02 It seems like something personal. What, what are you after?
10:51 Speaker 03 I'm after you.
10:53 Sam Fragoso? Like we said, in D20, you play the president and you're the star of the film.
10:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:57 Sam Fragoso? Which means, like Harrison Ford.
10:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
11:00 Sam Fragoso? In Air Force One, you were number one on the call sheet.
11:03 Speaker 02 Yes.
11:03 Sam Fragoso? But before you went into the film, in the middle of the pandemic, as you began writing your memoir, you said in one interview, "I had to press a reset button in my life. I had a crisis of meaning in 2020." You get to number one, and that's your life. "Once I got there, it felt like somebody lied to me." What does a crisis of meaning look like for Viola Davis?
11:29 Speaker 02 A crisis of meaning for Viola Davis, I think, is probably what it looks like to everyone. When you set out on the path to become something, so you think, okay, I'm going to become a famous actress. So that's the goal, that's the vision, all right? And then you hit it, and then you realize, that's just not it. There is a disillusionment that happens, there's an emptiness that happens. And to be perfectly honest, there's an isolation and a loneliness that happens.
12:02 Sam Fragoso? And that happened to you.
12:03 Speaker 02 Oh, totally. And it's, I have to tell you, it sort of hit after the help, but really, it really reared its ugly head during How to Get Away with Murder. Because here's the thing, whatever goal you set in life is just the cosmic carrot to what life is supposed to be about. There's a quote that I've been using again and again during this whole publicity tour, which is, "Your purpose in life is not what you do, it's what happens to people when you do what you do." And that's it. That's it. I mean, I always tell people, even now, when you push your kid and you want your kid to be the top of the top and the best of the best, you have to know, invest some money
12:48 Speaker 02 in mental health treatment.
12:49 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
12:50 Speaker 02 Because they're going to need it. Because what's, what's going to happen is, when they are not that thing all the time, if they're not accomplishing something all the time, they're not going to know how to sit with themselves. And it's who you are that's more important than what you do. That was my big.
13:10 Sam Fragoso? There's a Stevie Wonder song.
13:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:12 Sam Fragoso? Where you sing, "Show me how to do like you."
13:14 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:15 Sam Fragoso? Show me how to do it.
13:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. I stole that from Alice Walker. She opens that, she opens The Color Purple with that quote. And it took me the longest time to realize that. And I realized it was a whole relationship between Seeley and Shug Avery. Where Shug Avery taught Seeley how to love herself, basically. Taught her how to, you know, find home. And I think that's, it sounds kumbaya.
13:43 Sam Fragoso? Listen, the show is called Talk Easy.
13:46 Speaker 02 Yes.
13:47 Sam Fragoso? Kumbaya is just part of the equation.
13:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:50 Sam Fragoso? So you do not need to apologize for kumbaya. But this book that you wrote, Finding Me, did feel like, does feel like, an invitation and a gift and an offering to discover and rediscover your younger self.
14:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
14:06 Sam Fragoso? And so I want to understand that young version of you a little bit. You were born in 1965.
14:12 Speaker 02 Yep.
14:13 Sam Fragoso? You're delivered by your grandmother in her home on the Singleton Plantation in St. Matthew, South Carolina.
14:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
14:21 Sam Fragoso? As the fifth of six children, most of your family then relocates to Central Falls, Rhode Island.
14:27 Speaker 02 Yep.
14:28 Sam Fragoso? A small mill town that was close to two racetracks that your father worked at.
14:33 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
14:34 Sam Fragoso? You were also the first African-American family to live in that community. But come the age of five, you meet your older sister Diane for the first time.
14:45 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
14:45 Sam Fragoso? She was maybe nine years old, I think.
14:47 Speaker 02 Yep.
14:47 Sam Fragoso? When she enters the bathroom with you, how does that scene unfold as we sit here right now? How do you see it?
14:56 Speaker 02 You know what? How I see it now was, that was the first seed of curiosity, which is a very, very powerful word to me. And the curiosity was, at five years old, it was one of the few times we had hot water. So I was taking a bath. And she, all I heard was a voice that said, "I want to see my baby sister. I want to see my baby sister." And I got out of the bathtub. And she stared at me and she looked around the house, which was, we grew up extremely poor.
15:29 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
15:30 Speaker 02 And she said the one phrase that opened my world, which is, "What do you want to be, Viola?"
15:41 Speaker 02 And I call that the call to adventure.
15:44 Sam Fragoso? Hmm.
15:45 Speaker 02 You know, I, I think that a lot of people feel like the call to adventure is, I have this great opportunity for you to work, you know, somewhere, make a lot of money and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the call to adventure for me was, what do I want to become? Who do I want to become? And is that exactly what the journey should be? I didn't know that. I mean, of course, I was five years old at the time, but I don't think that it matters how old you are. I think once the seed is planted, it's planted.
16:17 Sam Fragoso? Why do you think she asked you that? How do you think she knew to plant the seed?
16:23 Speaker 02 They say that every hero and hero, what I, what I mean by hero
16:28 Sam Fragoso? Joseph Campbell.
16:29 Speaker 02 Joseph Campbell is anyone who wants to slay their demons in life.
16:32 Sam Fragoso? Mm hmm.
16:33 Speaker 02 That's anybody.
16:34 Sam Fragoso? So that could be any of us.
16:35 Speaker 02 Any of us. Because she didn't want to be poor.
16:39 Sam Fragoso? She didn't want it.
16:40 Speaker 02 It's very simple. She grew up even at Singleton Plantation for many, many years and grew up in segregated schools where she was beaten.
16:49 Sam Fragoso? Had no indoor bathroom?
16:51 Speaker 02 No indoor bathroom and saw a bathroom for the first time when she was, right before she came to live with us.
16:58 Sam Fragoso? Hmm.
16:58 Speaker 02 And she couldn't believe it. Her jaw dropped because she saw the possibilities in life. And, I mean, I think it would be a better question for her, but what she did was she passed the baton on to me unknowingly.
17:12 Sam Fragoso? You've described your childhood at 128 Washington Street as full of rage and alcoholism.
17:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:19 Sam Fragoso? It was a war zone. If it was a war zone, who were the casualties?
17:25 Speaker 02 I was a casualty. My siblings were the casualty. My mom was a casualty. You know, my mom is now in advanced dementia. I absolutely, absolutely believe that the level of abuse that she endured caused that. So you do suffer trauma when you grow up in some level of poverty. And when you grow up with, you know, they say the first enemy of a child is an unhealed parent. And I had two unhealed parents. And certainly in every community, we have unhealed parents. But when it becomes the African American community,
18:05 Speaker 02 you have the one-two punch of family trauma and cultural trauma. A trauma of people that just don't see you. A world that just doesn't see you. And I think that was a double whammy for my dad, who raged out of control. And I'm just guessing at that because he was not curious. And so he raged.
18:30 Sam Fragoso? What do you mean he wasn't curious?
18:32 Speaker 02 He wasn't curious enough to know what was behind that rage and to heal it, is what I'm saying. It's all we have is curiosity. All we have is curiosity to wake up every single day with, I don't know, you walk into any situation and you have anxiety to just say, what's that? Where's that coming from? Or do you just live with it? Do you say that, you know what? I want to live a transcendent life. I don't want to roll into my grave being just a sort of mere, sort of the crappy version of myself. That's what curiosity does.
19:15 Speaker 02 It keeps you growing, you know? And it doesn't mean that it's perfect growth, but it does mean that you're curious enough to know who you are.
19:26 Sam Fragoso? Inside that home, I want to better understand how you coexisted and made it through. And to do that, I thought you could read from page 70 of your book.
19:39 Speaker 02 Oh, page 70? Okay.
19:41 Sam Fragoso? I have it highlighted here.
19:42 Speaker 02 Oh, my goodness. What is page 70? But sometimes we would go to the bar and play darts and pool and be treated to Sprite and potato chips. These happy moments would soon be followed by trauma. The rage of my dad's alcoholic binges, violence, poverty, hunger and isolation. In my child's mind, I was the problem. I would retreat to the bathroom, put something against the door so no one would come in, and I'd sit for an inordinate amount of time staring at my fingers and hands and try to erase everything in my mind. I wished I could elevate out of my body, leave it. One time when I was
20:24 Speaker 02 about nine years old, I succeeded. I left it, my body, that is, in a manner of speaking. I floated up to the ceiling, looking down at myself, observing my hair, my legs, and my face. Then I faced myself, staring directly into me. Wow. I loved it. It was a magical, secret power, only I didn't see myself as magical or powerful. I just felt free. It was my way of disappearing. It was my high. I couldn't always control this out-of-body sense, but when I could, it was beyond fabulous. The power to leave my body, to be relieved of
21:07 Speaker 02 Viola for a while, was an ever-present image that followed me for decades.
21:13 Sam Fragoso? Was that... How did you feel reading that?
21:17 Speaker 02 Um, you know what? When I look back at Little Viola, Little Viola,
21:30 Speaker 02 I never felt safe. You know what? Even worse than that, I felt wrong.
21:42 Speaker 02 I felt like whoever was building me up there in the sky just did everything wrong.
21:51 Speaker 02 Put me in the wrong family, put me in the wrong circumstances, didn't make me pretty enough.
22:00 Speaker 02 Made me too black. Every aspect of me was wrong. I didn't see any evidence in life of love.
22:14 Speaker 02 I couldn't articulate it at the time. I just sort of disappeared and numbed. Because that's what you do when you grow up in violence, too. You do everything you can to make yourself as small as possible. And then I was a bed wetter.
22:34 Speaker 02 And then adding the poverty with that, it just felt wrong.
22:42 Speaker 02 If I did have a call to adventure, it would be to find self-love. To find some, to find God who can put the deus ex machina. That's what they call it in Greek tragedy. The God from the machine that would pluck characters out of a play. And when they plucked them out of the play, it was a sign that they were dead.
23:07 Speaker 02 But I just wanted to be, I wanted God to appear to tell me that I was made with love.
23:18 Speaker 02 Or some level of purpose. Because I didn't see any evidence of it, none.
23:26 Sam Fragoso? I don't know if God appeared, but Cecily Tyson, in the autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, did appear. And she did come down.
23:38 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:39 Sam Fragoso? And pluck you.
23:40 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:41 Sam Fragoso? 1974, you and your family, crowding around the TV.
23:44 Speaker 02 Yes.
23:45 Sam Fragoso? What happened?
23:47 Speaker 02 You know what? It's that emoji, that emoji. I'm using it more now, the emoji where the brain is being blown to bits. That's what it was. It was the emoji where it was a God moment. It was a Sermon on the Mount. It was the burning bush, as Elizabeth Gilbert would say. It's one of those moments where, you know, the wind stopped blowing. Because what I saw was... Magic. I saw excellence. And I saw it in the body of a woman who looked like me, who really looked like my mom, my mom, and very, very similar. And I saw evidence of what I wanted to become.
24:28 Sam Fragoso? And that scene that you just read from, in the bathroom, disassociating, elevating, some kind of magic trick in that, leaving your body, becoming somebody else. Do you think that paired with Ms. Tyson's work were the early foundations for you as a young actor?
24:48 Speaker 02 Absolutely. But there was a lot of early foundations. Ms. Tyson was one of them. My sister Diane was one of them. Mr. Yates, my drama teacher, was one of them. Mr. Aces, who was the head of the Glee Club, was one of them. My sister Dolores. The birth of my sister Danielle, who I loved more than anything, you know, on the planet. All of those were signs that carried me.
25:18 Sam Fragoso? Mm. Carried you to Rhode Island College, having participated in the upward bound program in high school. I heard you used to tell people, acting is not what I do, it's who I am.
25:32 Speaker 02 Oh, my God. I take that back. I take that back a little bit. It is what I do, but-
25:39 Sam Fragoso? But at the time, it was true.
25:40 Speaker 02 At the time, it was true because it was healing.
25:43 Sam Fragoso? And there's one performance that's not in your memoir-
25:46 Speaker 02 Yep.
25:47 Sam Fragoso? -that I think really represents your commitment- to becoming an actor. I don't know if you know what I'm gonna say.
25:53 Speaker 02 Oh, my God. I hope you're not gonna say something bad.
25:56 Sam Fragoso? At some point during college, or maybe a little after college, you performed this one-woman show as musician Etta Jones all across Rhode Island. You wore a blue dress, I don't know if it was as blue as that, in the performance. And you even did the show once at a basketball court, where one person was in the audience. People were playing basketball, and I think there was a dog.
26:22 Speaker 02 Yep. It jumped on me.
26:23 Sam Fragoso? Tell me about this performance.
26:26 Speaker 02 It was horrible, first of all. It was not a good performance. But you know what? I say that with great pride. Cicerotha Jones, she's an opera singer out of Rhode Island. I think in the 19, turn of the 20th century, which I can't even sing. And I think I sang 14 songs.
26:44 Sam Fragoso? I was told you were gonna sing a couple of them for us today.
26:47 Speaker 02 My God, no. But you know, you know what, though? Here's the thing. You really do learn through failure. You really do. Because I remember my sisters came to see it and they were like, that was awful. They said, did you even hear yourself? I mean, it was awful. And I remember I felt so bad. But here's the thing. I got up and I did it again. And it was still bad, but a little bit better. And then I did it again. And I did it again. And I think that by the time I got to the final performance, it was the final performance where it was just an audience of one. And it was greatly improved.
27:31 Sam Fragoso? Was that at the basketball court?
27:33 Speaker 02 No, the basketball court was maybe four people.
27:36 Sam Fragoso? Okay.
27:36 Speaker 02 The final performance was one person. And if you're willing to go through the pain and work with fear, I think there's some beautiful discoveries there. And the beautiful discovery I made is I had it in me. I had the tools to live better, to work myself through failure. It wasn't the performance that mattered. That's just a cosmic carrot. It's the journey in taking out everything that I had within me to keep going. And for me, that's proof positive of God's love. I call it God's love for me.
28:20 Speaker 02 Because he gave me the courage to know that there was something even better, even within a performance that probably I wasn't even right for.
28:28 Sam Fragoso? I love that story. And I don't know, it's not in the book, but I love that story because if you're going to do it, you're gonna do it. Anywhere, anytime, for anyone, at any place, at a basketball court, dog barking, people playing pickup in the background, even in a blue silk dress. You either do or don't.
28:52 Speaker 02 It's the doing it that's the beauty of it.
28:55 Sam Fragoso? In many ways, it's the only thing that really matters.
28:58 Speaker 02 That's it.
28:58 Sam Fragoso? Do you show up?
29:00 Speaker 02 Show up.
29:01 Sam Fragoso? And so, speaking of which, why don't we take a break? And when we come back, we'll tell the story of the first time you showed up to audition for Juilliard. That'll be next with Viola Davis after the break.
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30:55 Sam Fragoso? You showed up to your audition at Juilliard and said, "I have 45 minutes for this audition."
31:01 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
31:02 Sam Fragoso? Is that true?
31:03 Speaker 02 That is true.
31:04 Sam Fragoso? And they said what?
31:06 Speaker 02 You audition a lot at Juilliard. At the time, it had a 3% acceptance rate. So the first room, I auditioned, and I was so nervous at the time, but I said, "I only have 45 minutes. I have to get back to the theater in Providence. I have to get on the train. It's a four-hour trip." And so, they talked amongst themselves after seeing my audition, and then they stopped all the auditions that they had. It seemed like hundreds of kids there. And they took all their chairs. All of the teachers took all their chairs into the big, big... It was a rehearsal room. It's the biggest, I think, room 103. I remember the room, 103. They took all their chairs in there.
31:50 Speaker 02 Because at Juilliard, you audition for a different set of teachers. Like, maybe five auditions. You're there all day, sometimes two or three days. So all of them took their chairs into one room to see me, and I knew I had gotten in. You know what I miss about myself at that time? I'm just thinking about this. That I knew that I knew that I knew that I was good. I think that as you go along, the imposter syndrome can take over more. And that's because you're exposed to the world. And no one could tell you the sort of hyper-biblical level of confidence you need
32:32 Speaker 02 when you're at that level of your profession. You know, you almost have to have an arrogant level of confidence, which I do not have. But at that point, I knew I was good. I knew I was gonna get in. I just did. And there's something about that that I miss. I could take a sliver of that now.
32:57 Sam Fragoso? So you're saying, the performer that was in $50,000 of college debt?
33:05 Sam Fragoso? Was more confident than EGOT winner Viola Davis.
33:11 Speaker 02 Ah, yeah.
33:13 Sam Fragoso? What the hell does that mean?
33:14 Speaker 02 When I say confident too, is you always want to be better. Okay, you do. I'm contradicting myself a little bit, what I'm about to say. I'm, I'm not mad at the imposter syndrome. I think it's underrated, actually. Okay. But at the time, I didn't even have imposter syndrome. I just knew that I knew that I knew that I was great. I did. Now that the world has gotten to me, it's like, oh, I could have been better. Oh, you know, this, oh, you know, yeah, I got the EGOT, but you know, I could have done this better. I could have done that better.
33:53 Speaker 02 Now Viola herself, which is different than Viola younger now, this is not the work. This is just me, way more self-love. Those are two different things.
34:06 Sam Fragoso? That's the trade-off.
34:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:08 Sam Fragoso? At Juilliard, what was the objective of their training? Were they shaping you into a good actress or a perfect white actress?
34:17 Speaker 02 Definitely a perfect white actress.
34:19 Sam Fragoso? And what does that look like?
34:21 Speaker 02 What it looks like, it's technical training in order to deal with the classics, in order to deal with the Strindbergs and the O'Neills and the Chekhovs and the Shakespeare. I totally understand that, to get your voice, everything. But what it denies is the human being behind all of that. I feel that as a black actress, I'm always being tasked to show that I have range by doing white work. So if I can master, I don't know, Blanche Dubois in Tennessee Williams, you know, Streetcar Named Desire.
34:59 Sam Fragoso? Which I'd love to see, by the way.
35:01 Speaker 02 I would love to see it too. I did it in class once, I listened. And listen, I could do the best I can with Tennessee Williams, but he writes for fragile white women. Beautiful work, but it's, it's not me. Or do a fabulous job playing, I don't know, Hermione in Winter's Tale in Shakespeare. But we don't put those same parameters on white actors. You know, you can have a white actress who's 54, 55 years old, which is a great age to play mama in Raising the Sun. Is she gonna be able to pull off Mama in Raising the Sun? Is she gonna be able to pull off Beneath the? Is she gonna be able to pull off Molly in Joe Turner's Come and Gone?
35:43 Speaker 02 When Molly says, I ain't going south and make me believe it? They don't have to do that. So for those four years at Juilliard, all the white actor has to do is play all white characters. That's not me. Me, I'm tasked to only do the classics. And no black writer is included in those classics. And then, once I leave Juilliard, guess what? Most of what I will be asked to do are black characters, which people will not feel that I am black enough. So then I'm caught in a quagmire, this sort of in-between place
36:25 Speaker 02 of sort of not understanding how to use myself as the canvas. Juilliard was an out-of-body experience because, once again, I did not think that I could use me. Me needed to be left at the front door, even though me was what got me in there.
36:44 Sam Fragoso? You is what also delivered you to the work of August Wilson.
36:49 Speaker 02 Yes.
36:50 Sam Fragoso? When you leave college, speaking of a playwright that's not often taught
36:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:55 Sam Fragoso? in school.
36:56 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
36:57 Sam Fragoso? People know you from Fences, Ma Rainey, King Henry II.
37:02 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
37:03 Sam Fragoso? But your first Tony nomination came from your turn in Seven Guitars.
37:08 Speaker 02 Yes.
37:09 Sam Fragoso? Um, in the mid 90s, I think it was.
37:11 Speaker 02 Yes.
37:12 Sam Fragoso? But on the subject of whiteness, was there a Q and A you had after one performance where there was a certain response from someone that that made you? That opened your eyes to to the conditions in which you were working.
37:28 Speaker 02 Yes, it was in San Francisco at ACT.
37:31 Sam Fragoso? You mean liberal San Francisco?
37:33 Speaker 02 You know, sometimes the liberal or, you know, conservative is just a mask for something else. But it was after a performance and one of the audience members raised their hand and said, why should we care about Floyd Schoolboy Barton? Which is the main subject, the character in Seven Guitars, who's a blues singer who's just come out of jail. He comes out of jail, he makes a hit, he has a hit record and he's about to be famous. And he gets killed. It's a tragedy. And in the end, this audience member said, I didn't feel anything. Why should we care about him? Was he famous? It's not like he's B.B. King.
38:16 Speaker 02 You know, so why should we care about him?
38:19 Sam Fragoso? He's not in the history books.
38:20 Speaker 02 He's not in the history books. And for me, that's something deeper. It's a huge problem I have with narratives.
38:28 Sam Fragoso? What is it?
38:29 Speaker 02 I think that people have a hard time sitting with a black character for two hours. Whether it's in a movie or whether it's in a play. I think they're okay with it if it's an allegory. If we're not really representing a human being. Okay, if we're representing an idea, maybe they will, maybe they'll carry it, okay? Because then they can look at it academically.
38:53 Sam Fragoso? They can attach it to a politic or something like that.
38:55 Speaker 02 Absolutely. Maybe they could do it if it's not deep. If it's maybe a comedy.
39:02 Speaker 02 But to have someone sit with you like you would in All My Sons, Death of a Salesman. You know, there is a sort of bothering for our worth in narratives. That if I made it into a history book, then I can know as maybe someone white, I'll know that you're worthy of my time in the theater. Me being worthy of anyone's time in the theater is me breathing.
39:36 Speaker 02 Toni Morrison coined the phrase, "The white gaze." And the reason why she coined it is because she said every time she put pen to paper, she had an imaginary white character on her shoulder that kept saying, "Write for me. Make me understand it. I don't understand it. Make me understand it." And so she felt that every time she read any work, even if it were The Invisible Man or Frederick Douglass's autobiography, she said the reason why she knew it wasn't written for her is because they were explaining things that you wouldn't have to explain to her. Okay? She even felt that Frederick Douglass was holding something back. When she got her first review for Shula in New York Times, a glowing review,
40:20 Speaker 02 but the one aspect of the review that really threw her was the writer said she could be brilliant if she only had white characters in it. I want to be seen as human. As human, as fragile, as messy, as much of a paradox as any character in Tennessee Williams or Anton Chekhov or Eugene O'Neill. I want you to sit with me.
40:48 Speaker 02 Even if I had five minutes of a silent moment because of what is happening in my life, as Arthur Miller said in View from the Bridge about Eddie, he's like, "He may be a despicable character, but something is happening to him and attention needs to be made. Attention needs to be made with us on many things beyond my blackness."
41:15 Sam Fragoso? Your artistry in that play, Seven Guitars, I never got to see it.
41:23 Speaker 02 Were you young?
41:24 Sam Fragoso? I think I was three or four at the time.
41:25 Speaker 02 Yeah.
41:32 Sam Fragoso? Parents could have taken me.
41:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, exactly.
41:34 Sam Fragoso? I want to hold like how you saw your purpose and your artistry in that moment. Working long, long hours in these theater productions that were paying you. Okay, but you know, can't buy a home. And to do that, I want to set up a scene in the play, which is set in a Pittsburgh tenement in 1948. Where you play Vera, the sometimes girlfriend to the 1940s blues musician Floyd, who's trying in this scene to desperately get Vera back.
42:05 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:06 Sam Fragoso? In the production, you played Vera. And I think it was Keith David.
42:11 Speaker 02 Keith David, yeah.
42:11 Sam Fragoso? Who played Floyd. But I'd like to swap for today and see if we can read this scene together.
42:18 Speaker 02 Oh, my goodness.
42:20 Sam Fragoso? Okay, here we go.
42:24 Sam Fragoso? Doing a scene opposite of you as someone who's not an actor is horrifying.
42:35 Sam Fragoso? Thankfully, this is mostly you talking in this scene.
42:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I'm playing Floyd's.
42:39 Sam Fragoso? Okay, ready? I want to say, yeah, but what am I saying yeah to? Another heartache, another time for you to walk out the door with another woman?
42:49 Speaker 02 You was there too, Vera. You had a hand in whatever it was. Maybe all the times we don't know the effect of what we do, but we cause what happens to us. Sometimes even in little ways we can't see.
43:03 Speaker 02 I went up to Chicago with Pearl Brown because she was willing to believe that I could take her someplace she wanted to go. That I could give her things that she wanted to have. She told me by that it was possible.
43:19 Speaker 02 Even sometimes when you question yourself. When you wonder, can you really make the music work for you? Can you find a way to get it out into the world? So it can burst in the air and have it mean something to somebody. She didn't know if I could do that, if I could have a hit record. But she was willing to believe it. Maybe it was selfish of her, maybe she believed for all the wrong reasons, but that gave me a chance to try. So yeah, I took it. It wasn't easy, I was scared, but when them red lights came on in that recording studio, it was like a bell ringing in the boxing match and I did it.
43:56 Speaker 02 I reached down inside me and I pulled out whatever was there. I did like my mama told me, I did my best. And I figured nobody could fault me for that. Then when they didn't release the record, Pearl Brown left. She thought she had believed wrong. I don't fault her for that. But I never lost a belief in myself. Then when they released the record, I realized I didn't have nothing but a hit record.
44:23 Speaker 02 I come back to you figuring you couldn't say no to a man who had got a hit record, but you did. And that made me see that you wanted more than Pearl Brown.
44:33 Speaker 02 I'm here saying I can give it to you.
44:37 Speaker 02 Try me one more time. And I'll never jump back on you in life.
44:42 Sam Fragoso? I got to thinking and I went down to the Greyhound bus station too. Here.
44:50 Sam Fragoso? See that? See, what does that say? It says one way, Chicago to Pittsburgh. It's good for one year from date to purchase. I'm gonna put that in my shoe. When we get to Chicago, I'm gonna walk around on it. I hope I never have to use it.
45:06 Speaker 02 Well, that's all right.
45:09 Speaker 02 I forgot all about that scene.
45:11 Sam Fragoso? I can tell one person has won a Tony Award.
45:15 Speaker 02 Oh.
45:15 Sam Fragoso? In this conversation.
45:18 Sam Fragoso? Did the music begin to work for you? Did it burst into the air, into the world?
45:26 Sam Fragoso? When you got the role in Doubt?
45:28 Speaker 02 Oh, most definitely.
45:32 Speaker 02 That's when it burst in the air.
45:33 Sam Fragoso? Cause I love that description of art. I love.
45:36 Speaker 02 I love that line. I try to use it all the time and I always misquote it.
45:41 Sam Fragoso? You can take that with you.
45:44 Speaker 02 Cause that's what you want with your art. You want it to mean something to someone, you know? Arthur Miller says it. I write so people can feel less alone. I mean, I think that there's probably a lot of young actors coming up now who just want the awards and they want the money. But really, a true artist wants it to sort of burst in the air. And they want it to sort of shift people. Shift how you think about yourself and the world. I mean, that's the goal. It's a lofty goal, but it's a goal nevertheless.
46:22 Sam Fragoso? You wrote a hundred-page biography for that character in Doubt, a character that appears in the movie for less than ten minutes.
46:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:31 Sam Fragoso? Tell me how you go about unpacking a character like that. How you go about unpacking any character from that period onward.
46:38 Speaker 02 I will say that one of the things that I always do is, first of all, they say in acting, you have to be an observer in a thief. The observing part comes from life and the thief probably comes from looking at other actors' work. But the observing, I always have to think of something in my life that I can compare it to.
47:01 Sam Fragoso? And so what did you think of?
47:02 Speaker 02 I was lost because I didn't understand the woman who would allow her son to stay with a man that could possibly be molesting him. And just say, at least, at least he's mentoring him. When his father, all the father does is beat him. I just didn't understand that. I felt it was too stark, too allegorical. I didn't get it. What happens for me is, when I get a character, the reason why I write is the more I write, I think I can unlock something. What's their favorite color? What's their first memory? Now, if it's written within an inch of its life, a lot of times, it's already in there. I only had eight minutes, so I had to make up something.
47:47 Speaker 02 And then I ask people questions, of course, because what I need to find out is what is the driving need in their life? What do they live for? Do they want to be loved? Do they want to have control? And I remember an acting teacher of mine, because I kept trying to figure her out. And one of the things she said is, Viola, maybe she leaves her son in that situation. Here's the big aha moment, because she has no choice. What are you telling me?
48:28 Speaker 04 I'm talking about the boy's nature now.
48:32 Speaker 04 Not anything he's done.
48:36 Speaker 04 You can't hold a child responsible for what God gave him to be.
48:43 Speaker 00 I'm only interested in actions, Mrs. Miller.
48:46 Speaker 04 But then there's the boy's nature.
48:48 Speaker 00 Leave that out of it.
48:49 Speaker 04 Forget it then.
48:52 Speaker 04 You don't enforce and people are saying things.
48:59 Speaker 04 My boy came to your school because they were gonna kill him in a public school.
49:06 Speaker 04 His father don't like him. He come to your school, kids don't like him.
49:13 Speaker 04 One man is good to him, this priest. Then does a man have his reasons? Yes. Everybody does. You have your reasons, but...
49:25 Speaker 04 Do I ask the man why he's good to my son?
49:30 Speaker 04 No.
49:35 Speaker 04 I don't care why.
49:40 Speaker 04 My son needs some man to care about him. And to see him through the way he wants to go.
49:50 Speaker 04 And thank God, this educated man with some kindness in him wants to do just that.
49:55 Speaker 00 This will not do.
49:56 Speaker 04 It's just till June.
49:58 Speaker 00 I'll throw your son out of this school.
50:00 Speaker 04 Why would you do that if it didn't start with him?
50:02 Speaker 00 Because I will stop this.
50:04 Speaker 04 You'd hurt my son to get your way.
50:06 Speaker 00 It won't end with your son.
50:08 Speaker 04 Throw the priest out then.
50:09 Speaker 00 I am trying to do just that.
50:12 Speaker 04 Then what do you want from me?
50:15 Sam Fragoso? Meryl Streep, your co-star. So the director made you go back and reshoot that scene the next day again and again and again and again.
50:25 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
50:26 Sam Fragoso? And I wondered, did that repetition... How did you use that? How did you continue doing that scene over and over? Because just doing it once seems like it would take a whole lifetime to produce that kind of work.
50:41 Speaker 02 Well, that's my theater training. I've done plays for over a year, again and again and again. I've done four-hour plays. I've done one-woman shows. I have over a 40-year career. So he could have done it 50 times and I would have been able to do it over and over again.
50:58 Sam Fragoso? And you were unflappable in that.
51:01 Speaker 02 I was pretty unflappable.
51:02 Sam Fragoso? Hmm.
51:03 Speaker 02 You know what? I'm an actor who stays in my lane.
51:07 Sam Fragoso? What does that mean?
51:08 Speaker 02 I'm not trying to be like anyone else. I wasn't trying to be like Adrian Lennox, who, you know, who...
51:16 Sam Fragoso? Auditioned for the part.
51:17 Speaker 02 She auditioned for the part and she originated the part. Fantastic actor. Great. I'm not trying to be like anyone else. I'm just trying to do what I do. And it did not throw me. And I didn't have enough experience in my life up until that time to have the sort of wisdom for it to throw me. I just thought that this is just what people do when they do a scene with Meryl Streep.
51:46 Sam Fragoso? It goes incredibly well. You receive an Oscar nomination. In the aftermath, you talked earlier about getting to a place where you had that crisis of faith a little bit. And I'm curious, in How to Get Away with Murder and in Widows, you said both Shonda Rhymes and Steve McQueen saw something in me that other filmmakers did not. What did they see in explorer that the industry seemed to be ignoring?
52:15 Speaker 02 They saw me as a woman. Usually, I'm just seen as mama, you know, with no sexuality, with no mess.
52:28 Speaker 02 Yeah, they saw me as a woman. And they saw me as a complicated woman. I think notoriously, women who look like me are seen limited like that. And we always have to bear the weight and the responsibility of it. Like, why don't you lose some weight? Why don't you make your voice higher? Why don't you do something different with your hair? As if your worth and your personage should be bordered.
52:53 Speaker 02 Our job as artists is to show you a human being. Human beings are vast. It's only in movie and TV land where the guy who gets the girl, the girl always has to look cute. The first scene, if the guy is cute, the woman has got to be cute. If there is a great best friend, then she's usually overweight. She's really, really funny. And my thing, that's not my world. I don't understand that world. The world is way more vast than that. And it's our job to be the conduit, to bring the audience that truth. And I think that's what Shonda rhymes and that's what, and Pete Nowak,
53:38 Speaker 02 who is a showrunner, was the showrunner of How to Get Away with Murder, and Steve McQueen saw in me.
53:45 Sam Fragoso? What did it feel like to be seen?
53:48 Speaker 02 Feels free, man.
53:52 Speaker 02 You know, when other people see you, then it forces you to see yourself. You know, after a while, when a culture defines you,
54:03 Speaker 02 your family defines you, you become trapped in definition and labels.
54:11 Speaker 02 Somewhere in there is you. You know you're in there somewhere, but you don't even know who you are anymore. You sort of filter it into a profession in order to get the job. And then all of who you are gets sort of left in a room somewhere. Because you feel like it has to look a certain way. No, it doesn't. Sanford Meisner says the most important question an actor can ask is why. I'm gonna redefine that question. I think the most important question anyone can ask is why.
54:50 Speaker 02 And then when you get to the end of why, the most really powerful question you can ask is why not? Why can't I be the way I am now? Why can't I have muscular arms? Why can't I have a deep voice? Why can't I be a love interest? Why do I have to be thirty-five?
55:11 Sam Fragoso? Why can't you be that confident performer that you were a Juilliard?
55:17 Speaker 02 Well, the world hadn't gotten to me yet.
55:21 Sam Fragoso? Okay, so now it's gotten to you.
55:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, the world has gotten to me.
55:24 Sam Fragoso? Is this what it looks like to be got to?
55:26 Speaker 02 Yes, this is what it looks like to be got to.
55:28 Sam Fragoso? I tell you, it looks pretty damn good.
55:30 Speaker 02 But thank you very much. But what I needed to do is press the pause button and work on the other part of me. You know, the thing about it is I
55:42 Speaker 02 I remember every time I would do a really great performance, I would feel so jazzed and so happy. And then go home. And Violet didn't feel like anything if she wasn't working. If she wasn't on stage doing a monologue that made everybody cry and stand up and throw flowers, then she was worthless. And as soon as I stepped off the stage, it was like unplugging a phone and the phone losing its charge. The rest of my life looked like a wasteland.
56:17 Speaker 02 And I've realized once again is the reason why I wanted to be a great actress is because I just wanted to be somebody.
56:27 Speaker 02 But that ain't it.
56:30 Speaker 02 It's just not it. You know, Joseph Campbell talks about slaying dragons and going out there and with mentors and allies. And then you finally get to that inmost cave where you come face to face, not with God, but with yourself. And what I realize is I was always worthy.
56:55 Speaker 02 I didn't have to do anything for that. And then it makes you look at your work totally different. It's not the power chord anymore.
57:06 Sam Fragoso? So what is?
57:07 Speaker 02 I'm the power chord.
57:11 Speaker 02 I am.
57:13 Speaker 02 Every single day when I wake up and put my feet on the floor, my job is to not betray myself. Acting is just one aspect of who I am. And every single time I betray myself, that's it. It's like I've unplugged myself once again. It's what gives my life meaning, which by the way, what gives my life meaning is my story, completely embracing it. You know, I'm worthy. Who knew? I didn't think that I, I, my big thing is, okay, the bedwetter Viola, who would chuck a finger all the time and call people cocksucker, motherfucker at six years old. It was the hardest sentence to write in the book, by the way.
57:56 Speaker 02 No one wanted me to open the book with cocksucker, motherfucker, were my favorite words when I was growing up. But I wanted to capture little Viola. Little Viola was fantastic.
58:12 Speaker 02 She did not betray herself ever. She was extremely inappropriate.
58:21 Speaker 02 She was extremely rough around the edges. She smelled.
58:28 Speaker 02 She was unruly.
58:31 Speaker 02 She had three pink slips and four white slips, disciplinary action and, you know, and every single day was in detention.
58:41 Speaker 02 But she was Viola. She was alive. And every single time I feel like I have to go back to heal her, she's sitting on some bench somewhere, imaginary bench, saying, "You don't have to heal me. I'm perfectly fine. I'm waiting for you to heal yourself so we can just sit and just squeal about this freaking life that we both created." Because I'm the one who got thrust out into the world and let other people get at me.
59:07 Sam Fragoso? Your husband said, "Viola is never far away from that little girl she talks about. She's never forgot her."
59:15 Speaker 02 Yeah.
59:16 Sam Fragoso? You think he's right?
59:17 Speaker 02 Oh, absolutely.
59:20 Speaker 02 You know what? When I think about her, it's the only thing that really makes me enjoy my life.
59:27 Sam Fragoso? What do you mean?
59:28 Speaker 02 Because it gives me perspective. I talk about my therapist, you know, when I said, "I gotta, you know, it's my job to heal this little girl because she was really traumatized because of the violence in the house." He was like, "Why? I thought she was pretty brave."
59:43 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
59:44 Speaker 02 She, she, she got it done. It's a 55, it was 55, 55-year-old Viola that needs help. I was like, "Excuse me. I'm evolved." He was like, "Let her squeal."
59:56 Sam Fragoso? Hmm. I only have two questions left for us because then we gotta go.
59:59 Speaker 02 Okay.
1:00:00 Sam Fragoso? But speaking of perspective, in 2008, around Doubt, when most people were introduced to you and your artistry, you were 43 years old then. And you did this interview on NPR where they asked you about recognition. Doesn't mean anything now that you've received the Oscar nomination. And I just want to listen to what you said back then. This is you back in 2008.
1:00:28 Speaker 02 I don't care what they say. The bottom line is they want to do something that moves people, that affects them in some way, or else what you do is kind of meaningless. So when you get all the buzz and the reaction, you know it's hitting someone. The part that means nothing is the part that hasn't translated into anything tangible. Buzz doesn't pay the mortgage. Buzz doesn't... You know, buzz is buzz. And it's also what you don't really do the project for. And I always kind of feel, you know, it's just me. It's, once again, they're going to find me out. They're building me up just to knock me down.
1:01:12 Speaker 02 You know, that's the part that doesn't mean anything because you know what? At the end of the day, you got to keep working. I am a theater-trained actress. I'm not a fluke. I'm not a body. I'm not a face. I'm an actor. I want to be able to do what Helen Mirren, Meryl Streep, all of them are doing. That is my dream.
1:01:35 Sam Fragoso? Seventeen years later, as you turn 60 this year.
1:01:39 Speaker 02 It's getting deep.
1:01:41 Sam Fragoso? You say, "I'm not a fluke. I'm not a body. I'm not a face. I'm an actor."
1:01:50 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
1:01:52 Sam Fragoso? To say that after all that you had been through, to get to that performance in doubt, to stand on that and to know then, I guess now that you have lived up to everything that you said you wanted to do there, what is the dream for you?
1:02:10 Speaker 02 Two things. I'm always trying to find home.
1:02:14 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
1:02:15 Speaker 02 And I tell my daughter all the time. I give her that quote, you know, how silly of me that I did not know that I was the love of my life. I'm beginning to understand that. So that, number one. Number two... It's my job in life because we will be no more. It's coming and we don't know when it's coming. It's some deep shit out there. But here's the thing. I see life as a relay race. Where you see a relay race and you see all the great runners. Each one that runs their leg of the race is a great runner in and of themselves.
1:02:53 Sam Fragoso? So you're passing the baton.
1:02:55 Speaker 02 I'm passing the baton, man, to the next great runner. I need to leave something in people. I do. And you have that dash of time to be able to do it, to be able to make that change. And I think that that, pretty much, the twofold of loving oneself and leaving something behind, I think that's what makes a life.
1:03:20 Sam Fragoso? Anne Lamont writes, "You can either leave something for people or you can leave something in people."
1:03:27 Speaker 02 And when you leave something in them, it burns like an ember. It does. It's, it's, it burns forever. You have a lot of people, like Anton Chekhov said, who are living lives in quiet desperation. And all of us can be healers if we choose, whatever we choose, we choose as an elixir to heal. You could be fabulous at what you're doing. You can even make a lot of money doing it. But ultimately, if the goal is not for it to burst into the air and have it mean something to someone, then you're not doing anything.
1:04:07 Sam Fragoso? Your elixir, since time immemorial, was observation, has been observation. And my last question for us. Can you tell me about, as an observer and thief and actor, that woman on the corner, standing in the freezing cold weather that you saw as a child?
1:04:30 Speaker 02 I think the one reason why I became an actor is because I see her.
1:04:34 Sam Fragoso? And who is she?
1:04:36 Speaker 02 Oh, she's everything.
1:04:39 Speaker 02 She's a little girl who played with Barbie dolls, who wanted to be somebody. She's probably someone who had a really deep laugh. She's someone who probably fell in love with everything in her being and maybe got her heart broken. She's someone who's worthy of love, belonging. I see her. And I think that's why I became an artist is because I see her.
1:05:08 Sam Fragoso? When you saw her, where was she at?
1:05:10 Speaker 02 She's so many people.
1:05:12 Sam Fragoso? Mm-hmm.
1:05:12 Speaker 02 Growing up in Central Falls, on Dexter Street, on Broad Street. You know, with the cigarette and the bad skin.
1:05:20 Sam Fragoso? The bloodshot eyes.
1:05:21 Speaker 02 The bloodshot eyes.
1:05:22 Sam Fragoso? The dirty sneakers.
1:05:23 Speaker 02 Dirty sneakers.
1:05:24 Sam Fragoso? The corduroy coats.
1:05:25 Speaker 02 Corduroy coat, you know, that with the faux fur in the inside and the jeans that don't fit. I think that by the time she makes it to the screen, she's been so filtered down into a version, um, acceptable version of herself. And I think that when you water her down into an acceptable version of herself, you're telling her that you don't love her.
1:05:46 Sam Fragoso? Hmm.
1:05:47 Speaker 02 You're telling her that you're not meeting her where she is. I meet people where they are. If a role calls for me to take my wig off or to have no makeup or to have snot coming out of my nose because that's who the person is, then I am honoring their truth. It's that that's reconciling little Viola. Little Viola who went to school, whose teacher said, "You gotta go home because you smell so bad." You know? I didn't feel worthy because I felt like I had to filter myself down. I had to go through a machine of worthiness. And worthiness is nothing to be bartered with. It's as is. You are worthy as is.
1:06:32 Speaker 02 Right now, as my daughter said when she saw this homeless man in Chicago, it was the last day of Widows. She was six years old and we were in the car getting ready to go back to the trailer. It was over. And she said, "Oh, look at that homeless man. Look at Mama. He's dirty and he probably smells bad. Oh, my God." And then there was a big pause. And she said, "But he's my brother."
1:07:09 Speaker 02 God says he's my brother.
1:07:13 Speaker 02 And I think that's the most beautiful, transcendent part of being an actor, is that when you meet people where they are, and you channel them where they are, they become your brother. We're wired for connection. And sometimes, for me, that's where I got it from, in my art.
1:07:36 Speaker 02 And it's been my honor to do that. And sometimes, even if I fail, at least that was the objective.
1:07:43 Sam Fragoso? To see the invisible?
1:07:45 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:07:46 Sam Fragoso? To recreate them and make them visible to all of us?
1:07:49 Speaker 02 Absolutely.
1:07:50 Sam Fragoso? Well, I hope you haven't been watered down or filtered in this conversation.
1:07:55 Speaker 02 No, it's been fantastic. Hope none of it gets me in trouble. But you know what? Here's the thing, you know, it's like John Lewis says, "Maybe I'll get into some good trouble."
1:08:06 Sam Fragoso? I wish that for us both.
1:08:07 Speaker 02 Yes.
1:08:07 Sam Fragoso? And speaking of the work, how it lives in me, and I know so many people listening.
1:08:15 Sam Fragoso? Thank you.
1:08:17 Sam Fragoso? Thank you.
1:08:19 Speaker 02 Thank you. I appreciate that.
1:08:22 Sam Fragoso? Viola Davis. Appreciate you coming in.
1:08:25 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thank you for having me.
1:08:59 Sam Fragoso? And that's our show. If you enjoyed that episode with Viola and you want to help us out, the best thing you can do is share it. I want to give a special thanks this week to Krista Dallas and the teams at Wolf Casteller PR and Amazon. I also want to thank Colma Domingo, Tara Duncan, Rachel Neal, and of course, our guest, Viola Davis. Her new film, G20, is now available to stream exclusively on Prime Video. You can pick up a copy of her memoir, Finding Me, wherever you get your books. For more episodes with other great actors, I'd recommend Joaquin Phoenix, Michelle Williams, and Tom Hanks. To hear those and more Lemonada
1:09:41 Sam Fragoso? Podcast, listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. You can subscribe to Lemonada Premium for bonus content. Just hit the subscribe button on Apple Podcasts or head to lemonadapremium.com. We'll be dropping more and more of that bonus content in the coming weeks. Lastly, be sure to follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at Talk Easy Pod. If you want to purchase one of our mugs, they come in cream or navy, you can visit talkeasypod.com/shop. As always, you can reach me at [email protected] . Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok. Our executive producer is Chnix Sabra. Today's talk was edited by Lindsay Ellis, Adam Jamal, and Ariel Gardner,
1:10:25 Sam Fragoso? and mixed by the inimitable Andrew Vastova. It was taped out of PodStream at the old Actors Equity Building here in New York City. Our music, Dylan Peck. Illustrations, Krista Shannoy. Photographs, Jenna Jones. Additional research comes from Pierce Harvey, and this episode was made in partnership with the good people at Lemonada Media. I'm Sanford Gosso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with a brand new episode. Until then, stay safe, and so long.
1:11:07 Speaker 05 I'm Dan Heath. On What It's Like to Be, I interview people about their jobs. Here's a married couple that drives a long haul truck together.
1:11:15 Speaker 04 We backed up and they loaded fresh dead rats.
1:11:19 Speaker 05 I mean, how many rats would you guess were back there?
1:11:21 Speaker 04 There were 32,000 pounds of them.
1:11:24 Speaker 05 32,000 pounds of frozen dead rats.
1:11:28 Speaker 04 That's it.
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