She grew up in poverty and worked her way up to becoming the first Black woman to have won an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony.
This is the story of Viola Davis.
This is the story of Viola Davis.
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I grew up in poverty, you know, I grew up in apartments that were condemned and rat-infested,
00:10and I just always sort of wanted to be somebody, and I just wanted to be good at something.
00:31Do you think of yourself as a leader now?
00:34Yes, I do, and I didn't before. I resisted it in myself because I happened to be a very shy person.
00:41Sometimes I could be very timid.
01:00Every time I look at the little girl, I always thought, oh, it's a cute outfit, but she was always hungry,
01:27she was always shy, she was always kind of in the background, but inside she had big dreams bursting.
01:57I want to be a great example for my daughter, I really do.
02:16I want to be a great example of passion, of hard work, of love, and always understanding.
02:27I want to be a great example for my daughter, I really do.
02:57Every member of our staff is represented by a person of color, by the LGBTQ community.
03:12Every single narrative that comes through our doors that we accept have people of color.
03:20Women are at the forefront of just about every project.
03:36It's important to me at this point in my maturity to just embrace who I am.
03:44I think that it's important at this point in my life to live an authentic life.
03:51I think that if you probably interviewed a lot of people who were towards the end of their lives,
03:57I think that that's what they would say, that they wish that they had lived their lives more authentically.
04:02And this is a part of it, wearing my hair.
04:14It's fabulous that she's mysterious, it's fabulous that she's messy, it's fabulous that she's sexy,
04:28it's fabulous that she's a mature woman over 40, because those are all adjectives that don't usually pertain to women of color.
04:37I feel great as a woman. I feel like I'm at a point where I'm owning my power.
04:47I'm owning my story, I'm owning my beauty, I'm owning my joy, I'm owning my hard work.
04:56I'm standing in front of people and I can say that I'm not the best of anything,
05:03but I deserve whatever I get because I've worked hard for it. So I feel wonderful.
05:20It is through human dedication and effort that we move forward.
05:28And then when we don't work, what happens is that time actually becomes an ally to the primitive forces of social stagnation.
05:43I just feel like the narratives that are created in Hollywood right now have got to become inclusive.
06:00They have got to reflect the changing world and the changing cultures.
06:13I feel like I'm at a point where I'm owning my power.