Poured Over: Viola Davis on Finding Me
“And so then, I felt like that’s when I had to go back to the beginning of telling my story of sort of rediscovering the young Viola, who definitely may have been traumatized, but was pure.” Multi-award-winning actress Viola Davis has poured herself into the characters she portrays on the big screen and on stage. And, now, in her most deeply personal and inspiring role yet, as author, she has released her memoir, Finding Me — out now.
Viola joins us on the show to talk about rediscovering the younger version of herself in order to write this book, the impact of Miss Cicely Tyson and August Wilson, the magic of artistry, the Black best friend role, the freedom and bravery that came with playing Annalise Keating, the connection between joy and peace and trauma, the radical act of forgiveness and more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end the episode with a TBR Topoff featuring book recommendations from Margie and Marc.
Featured Books:
Finding Me by Viola Davis
Educated by Tara Westover
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown
Native Son by Richard Wright
Black Boy by Richard Wright
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional bonus episodes on Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.
Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:
Barnes & Noble: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and it is my great good fortune this morning to be speaking with Viola Davis, who I’m pretty sure does not need an introduction of any kind, but she is one of our greatest actors. She holds an Academy Award, an Emmy, two Tony Awards. She’s a mother, a wife, a sister, a daughter, an aunt, the head of her own production company. And now she’s an author, Ms. Davis, thank you so much for joining us on Poured Over today.
Viola Davis: Thank you for having me. Thank you.
B&N: How does it feel to have your book out in the world. Finding Me published yesterday.
VD: Both exciting and frightening. Exposing, very vulnerable, but it feels right. It feels like this is a way to live.
B&N: This is a really powerful story. So for folks who read Educated by Tara Westover or The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, there’s a lot of that very intense childhood experience that you went through in Central Falls, Rhode Island, which, until I read your book, I did not realize, cocaine and chocolate factories.
VD: Yes. And bars on every corner. That’s what it’s known for. The most densely populated city per capita in the United States. That’s what we were known for back in the day and the most bars and churches on every corner. We took it.
B&N: Can we talk about your childhood for a minute, though, it was a really difficult experience for you. There was violence at home, there was extreme poverty, there was sexual abuse. How did you make sense of this as a tiny person?
VD: I didn’t make sense of it. I thought the part of me that just thought I was cursed. They just thought I was definitely as Joseph Campbell says, Born into a world where I didn’t fit in. So I couldn’t make sense out of it. So I just tried to survive it the best I could. But the nicks and scrapes, of course, both physical and emotional, so I sort of drowned in it. And I fought against it. Those were the two choices until, you know, Miss Tyson came along and I saw a portal, a way out.
B&N: I rewatched, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman in preparation for our conversation. And I do, I’m a bookseller, not an actor, but I understand what drew you to her performance. But could we take a minute and go back to you at, what 14 when you saw?
VD: No, I was nine a power nine. Okay, I always say I was six. But I was nine at the time. And I remember we were at 128 Washington Street, which I talked about in the book that was infested with rats and never had, plumbing never worked. ever. And it was on the part of the apartment that had no electricity, because we had to have those extension cords that ran into the apartment that did have electricity at times. And that’s where we watched The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. And I remember, it’s one of those moments. It’s one of those kind of God moments where the wind stops blowing, the sun comes out. And you see this sort of physical manifestation of a dream unfolding in front of you. Because here’s the thing, I saw the sort of magic that only can be had with artistry. I mean, that’s what art does. It has the power to heal, has the power to transform and transfix. And I saw all of that with her aging from 18 to 110, or 108. I think it was? But also I saw her playing a fully realized human being. That’s the thing. And she looked like my mom with the full lips and the chocolate skin and the short hair. Suddenly I just realized if I could do that, then I could make a life. That’s what I saw.
B&N: And you got that opportunity when you turned 14. You were part of an Upward Bound program. And you had an instructor who knew that you would be able to be successful as an actor. And he really pushed in a lot of ways.
VD: Yeah, he was one of those pushers. Jeff Kenyon is his name. He was also one of those counselors, they call them counselors that were assigned you in Upward Bound. And they basically were your guides, your Trailblazer per se and you could call them anytime a day, call them by their first name, which you couldn’t do in school. And I remember actually calling him in the middle of the day, in the middle of a science class because I was having a panic attack. And he came to the school in less than 20 minutes. He walked into the class. He said I need Viola. And I said, Hi Jeff. And I remember my teacher at the time say Don’t you ever call a teacher by their first name? Don’t you ever. And I remember Jeff shutting him up and saying, I told her she can call me by my first name, and I need to see her right now. It’s sort of like that person who plucks you out of your life that has the strength and the courage, it’s sort of pluck you out of your life, loves you enough, sees you enough, has enough strength. Once again, Joseph Campbell calls them allies and mentors. They’re the ones who come into your life when you answer that call to adventure and sort of show you the path, show you that labyrinth. And that’s what he did. And I don’t even remember what I told him, I probably was having a panic attack about food. And he talked to me for about five minutes, I remember him going, so what’s going on. And I needed that at the time, I don’t think that people understand the value of looking someone in the eye and connecting with them, and really, really listening. And that’s what they did.
B&N: And he made it possible for you to see acting in a way that I’ve never quite heard it described. And I’m gonna quote you for a second, I wanted to talk like an actor and train like an actor, the process and artistry of piecing together a human being completely different from you was the equivalent of being otherworldly. And that’s such a nice description. Is that your entire process? Or is that the start of your process? Stepping into a character?
VD: That’s the job.
B&N: Okay.
VD: I mean, the process is reading the script, understanding the given circumstances of the character, who are they? Where were they born? What’s their favorite color? Do they have teeth? Or do they not have to? I mean, there’s a whole process, but basically, the job is to create another human being. And I just thought that was the most fabulous thing in the world, especially because that’s what I did my entire life. I saw myself as, you know, a human whisperer. Or you could say that I was sort of a looky loo or a busy body. I felt like I was always an observer. I always wanted to peek in someone’s life and watch them move, watch how they ate their food, watch how they screamed or cried or just live their lives. And I never knew that that was a great foundation to being an artist. But once I found out that it was, I said, I do that. I think that that I could do that’s in my wheelhouse.
B&N: Part of why I ask is you were born on a plantation, a working plantation, where your grandparents were sharecroppers in South Carolina. And this was only 1965. Yeah, this was not that long ago. And then your parents came up to Rhode Island because of your dad’s work.
VD: Yes, he groomed horses on the racetrack. I think that being born on a plantation, you know, of course, that’s a part of my story, right? I was born August 11, 1965. I think one of the reasons why people are so shocked by it is I think that the whole conversation about race is so complicated, and so rife with pain and complexity of cruelty, and so much becomes an indictment, when you really do talk about it, that I think that people just don’t, so that when you do, it’s always shocking, because it’s easier to sort of live in The Glass Menagerie, right? That sort of land where you can create your own reality to sort of relieve yourself of the guilt and burden of a system that could possibly affect people in a way that’s deep and lasting, and traumatic. But I think that as much as my story is my personal story, that absolutely I want to own my story, is also one specifically of race in America and the end the stigma of race, the putrid sadness of race, especially the boys chasing me calling me you black ugly n______r, because we’ve injected into culture, that the only reason a system like racism can take place if we know that the person who is a victim of it can be dehumanized. So how can we dehumanize them? We take away every aspect of humanity from them. We tell them they’re ugly. We tell them that they’re not as smart. We tell them they’re not as capable. We take away opportunities. We put them in substandard schools very much my mom and dad’s story. Absolutely. And this is a result of it.
B&N: What shocked me too is after you start working as a professional actor, and I am jumping ahead a tiny bit, but this is touching on something you just said, you were cast in August Wilson’s Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which is part of the Pittsburgh cycle plays and you said you had a life changing moment as an actor that you really, that became the moment where you sort of stepped into your life as an actor, but then even though the accolades were there, the work didn’t really come. And this is a theme in your career, which astounds me because I have seen your work. That seven minutes in Doubt where there is no one on the screen, but you as Mrs. Miller, and to know later that you questioned that performance, which was really extraordinary and really unforgettable. But then you waited for the phone to ring even though people like Roger Ebert were saying, Oh, no, no, this is it. She needs to be nominated for all of the prizes right now. I mean, you have so much stage work, too, where that happened, you’ve played Rose Maxson on Broadway from August Wilson’s Fences, as well as on the screen and won both a Tony and an Academy Award. And yet, it wasn’t until How to Get Away with Murder, which was serial television, where you felt like you really had the freedom to do something new.
VD: Well, there’s three different narratives going on there. Okay. The first narrative is social media has beauguarded the definition of what it means to be an actor, that the people who have the mic, the interviews that you read online are people who are on top people who’ve probably been working since they were 19, and 20, who are the fortunate ones, but the reality of being an actor is 95% unemployment rate. 1% who make $50,000 a year or more. 4%, who make enough to make Plan One health insurance, which is $25,000 a year, .04% who are famous, meaning it’s hard to be a working actor. Okay. The majority of the stories out there are not the stories of the people who are sitting home, they’re signed with CAA. And they’re saying, You know what, I’m signed with CAA. I’m signed with William Morris. But I’d rather work at Urban Outfitters than to play a cop on network TV for five years doing 22 episodes a season. I don’t even know those actors, actually. When I grew up, I did not know those actors, the actors I know would be very happy getting a job even making, I don’t know, $350 a week doing a play back in the day, I wanted to work 10 weeks, so that I knew afterwards, when I was unemployed, I could collect 10 weeks of unemployment. But see, that’s not a pretty and sexy story. But that’s the truth. That’s the difficulty of being an actor. And then the other narrative is being a Black actor, and being a dark-skinned Black female actor. And I keep pressing this with people, who do you see, like me working in TV and film today? And if you see them, what are they doing? Be honest. And therein is the answer to your question. It is the lack of opportunity. This is not a business where everything like it’s the parting of the Red Sea, because you have talent, what happens is, depending on the kind of scripts, whatever is being produced, whatever is getting the green light vote, you got to look through those scripts, at roles that fit you, that people are open to even seeing you in. And a lot of those is the white male lead than the white female, who is the love interest of the white male lead. And then you may have a best friend role, because maybe the white female needs a best friend in order to bring about any kind of spiritual awakening in her and see that’s me. And listen, I was more than happy to do those roles. I’m happy to be a working actor. I seriously am. But that is the quagmire, the sludge you have to walk through to be an artist, and it’s not me downsizing myself. It’s a reality of the game.
B&N: One of the things I’m wondering, too, and I know I’ve mentioned Rose Maxson a minute ago, but you’ve got a playwright like August Wilson, who has won the Pulitzer Prize, major American voice had this series of 10 plays set in Pittsburgh. They are the African American experience in America. Throughout the early parts of the 20th century. And they are magnificent. They are so smart and so brilliant. And he is a major American voice you have played Rose Maxson from Fences on both Broadway and the screen. You’ve won a Tony for your Broadway production and an Academy Award for your work with Denzel Washington in the film version. Can we talk for a second about what it’s like to have the freedom to work with a playwright who understands the experience itself, but also what it’s like to play a character in two different medium where you’re on the stage, and then again, taking her out on to film which is a very different setup.
VD: I felt like doing the film was very, very difficult in terms of that, only because the camera, it’s a way more sort of intimate experience. But at the same time, it’s also an intimate experience being on the stage, because the very definition of being an actor is being private in public. So you have to always be honest, it’s just that, on the stage, you’re honest. But you got to project the honesty. I think it was probably more of a challenge with the long speeches, because you don’t find those long speeches and movies. You know, people usually just had one line here, maybe moments of huge silences. So yes, it was hard to recreate it and be honest with it. People ask me that question all the time, I have to say that there’s a part of me that just really wants to say what I want to say, which is there really is no difference. Sorry. I mean, I think people want to say in film, everything is smaller, not necessarily because in life, some things are not small. Some things are down and out arguments, some things are big emotions, especially when you get into tragedies. And that’s just the truth of it. But having August Wilson in my wheelhouse has been probably the biggest gift of my life, because what it’s injected in me is playing characters that are culturally specific. I’m not playing characters that sort of were probably written for a Caucasian counterpart. But someone said, I see you in it, but they never changed the words. And then I’m doing it and I’m thinking, Okay, should I address this one tiny minutiae that literally doesn’t specify me as a black woman? That’s what Aug does. It’s cultural specificity. And I think it’s been very freeing for my career. If I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t have had Fences. I wouldn’t have had Ma Rainey. I wouldn’t have had King Headley. I wouldn’t have Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, which has been really the foundation of my career.
B&N: The work that you did in television, building off of everything that occurred before it, because you had primarily been a stage actor. And then there had been some film work interspersed with that. Do I have that timeline right? And here’s this role, where suddenly, it seems like you had a writing staff who understood what to give you. I mean, I remember that one moment where Annalise Keating takes her wig off. And I thought, this is one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen on television, because it felt so intimate. It felt so intense. And that was your choice, correct?
VD: Yes. It’s my choice.
B&N: Six years of television is a really long time to live with a character though, isn’t it?
VD: Yeah, it’s a long time. But it’s fantastic to be on TV for six years, to be doing anything for six years. Here’s the thing. And hopefully I can articulate this correctly. How to Get Away with Murder was a culmination of yes, the writers being open enough to inject Annalise with both my femininity and my blackness. That’s Shonda Rhimes. She’s a Black woman, and Pete Norwalk, the willingness, the openness to do it, the lack of fear, because that’s what it is that stops people, but also to give myself a little credit, it’s also the bravery of an actor to put their stamp on it. And the reason why I say bravery is because I had to step out on a limb to create my own category, there is no category for me, there just is not. With Black women. You’re either the judge, the lawyer, or you’re the cute girl and the rom com. That’s it. Those are the two different categories. Now I know other people get typecast, but there’s way more categories for them. There’s older woman, there is the off centered sort of ethnic beauty. There’s a classical beauty. There’s a girl next door beauty, you could go on and on with our counterparts. With us, there are none. So the understanding, with me, is she’s just going to be strong. She’s maybe smart, but with no sexuality. Basically, maybe the sexuality of a dude, no complexity, she knows what to do even in even in your personal life. Okay, she always has the answers, because you see that in a lot of characters that I’ve played, that a lot of Black women play, there’s always that ninth hour speech where she knows what to say to the main character to completely release their lives. I felt like I had to take a huge risk with Annalise Keating because I no longer wanted to stifle all those adjectives that existed in me. I am a woman. And I always use the difference between sexy and sexual. Sexy is what’s placed on you in order to get usually a male to be attracted to you. And people use that in the commercialiality in TV and film a lot, in order to get viewership, in order to get money. Sexual is a part of a person’s makeup. Sexual is just as much a part of someone as where they went to school, their vulnerability. That’s my job as an actor. And I just wanted to inject her with all of those things. And that’s why I took the wig off. I felt like if I didn’t take the wig off, then I would still be in TV land, which is, what is her wig look like this week? What is she wearing? What purse is she wearing? How are they doing them? Wasn’t that makeup? Beautiful? That’s not my job.
B&N: Part of why I wanted to walk through some of the bigger moments of your career and some of the bigger issues, too, of your career is I’m really wondering, here we have all this context for this amazing work that you do. And you took a step back for a second, and you took the time to write a book. Why do that now?
VD: Why not? You know, there’s a part of me that feels like I want it all. You know, I’m not gonna say just a part of me a huge part of me. It’s the young Viola, who’s like, I want it all I do, there was a part of me that even when I was running, that looked at all the kids I grew up with, even the ones that I loved, like, didn’t like, and there’s a part of me that always was untouched by the outside world that I kept sacred that just said loud and clear. I deserve exactly what you have. That’s a part of it. But the other part of it was sort of a weird crisis of meaning that I had a value. It was during the pandemic with Black Lives Matter and Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, in sort of an awakening and COVID of it all, and the LGBTQ community of it all and political poop fest that we were going through of it all. And there was a part of me that felt like I had to press a reset button in my life. And I’d been working so hard that I just wasn’t present in it. And the only gauge we have in our culture of meaning is you find a profession, something that you do really well. And you get to number one, girl, you get to number one, and you have a life. And I felt like I sort of did that. And somebody lied to me. But that ain’t it. That’s when I had to go back to the beginning of telling my story of sort of rediscovering the young Viola, who definitely may have been traumatized, but was pure.
B&N: Did anything surprise you while you were writing Finding Me?
VD: Yeah. Yeah, a lot of things surprised me. I think the number one thing that surprised me is how tough I was. I was a tough kid. I didn’t sort of admire that. Or it’s not that I admired it or didn’t admire it. When I was younger, I just didn’t acknowledge it. But I was a fighter, you know. And that means something, you know, as you’re being sort of tossed in these sort of waves, this tsunami, that person that continues to forge ahead, searching, being driven by some sort of unforeseen knowledge that there’s something out there for me, and the belief that I deserved it. I was surprised by that. I just always thought she was broken. And she was, but here’s the biggest surprise, too, that the joy and the peace exist on the same plane as the trauma and the brokenness and the sadness, that it’s not a detour from life. It’s not the curse of life. It’s a part of life and feeling it and experiencing it is what being alive means. That sort of life experience. It’s what Joseph Campbell talks about, you know, no one’s searching for the meaning of life. They’re searching for that experience of feeling alive. That’s what I discovered. too.
B&N: Part of that experience to has brought you to a place of forgiveness with your dad. Can we talk about that process for a second? I think there are people still out there in the world who think forgiveness is a very passive thing. But forgiveness, to me, is an action. And it’s a very conscious decision. And it seems to me, having read your memoir that that’s what happened for you as well. But can we talk about that because your dad was a complicated guy.
VD: Yeah, everybody is complicated. And I think forgiveness is the most radical act you can ever do in your life, I actually think it is extraordinarily difficult and also extraordinarily easy. It’s giving up all hope of a different past. And it’s something that you do for you. And one of the reasons why you do it for you, which by the way, they say that that successful’s therapy too, when you understand that your parents did the best they could with what they had. And you sort of absolve them of that is, nobody wants to hear a 60 year old woman who can’t relieve things in her life because daddy did her wrong. At some point, your life becomes yours. And then it’s up to you to save yourself. And it’s up to you to recognize that whatever wrong someone did to you, or whatever, you have to understand that that was theirs, that that belong to them. That was one thing that was easy for me to do with my dad. And also, here’s the thing, I thought it was pretty radical for my father to make amends in his life. I do. And there’s a part of me, once again, I go back to why I read the book, is I was tired of walking into rooms with a bunch of liars. I’m gonna say that a bunch of liars, a bunch of people who only shared the prettiest part of their stories, and then made you feel ashamed if you in somehow stepped out and share it a part of your life that wasn’t about winning, and wasn’t about just absolute joy and ease. And being a badass and all of that. I think connection happens when we allow ourselves to be seen and heard. All right. That’s what I did with my book. I felt like my dad was pretty radical and doing that. Also, I really do. And him apologizing to my mom. And more than an apology to my mom, the last few decades of his life, he raised a lot of my siblings, children with my mother, side by side, loving her. I made the choice to forgive.
B&N: And it has worked out well for you. What are your sisters think of the book? I mean, your sister Diane is the one who said to you, do you want to be in this place the rest of your life? I mean, she sort of jumped started everything for you. But has she read the book yet? I don’t know if she’s read the whole book. I think she bought it the other day. She’s gonna love the book. I know my sister, Diane. She’s gonna love the book. I think the beauty of my sister Diane is and the beauty of my sister Dolores. The beauty of all my sisters is I think they want to lean into the truth. And I absolutely do think that two opposing thoughts and feelings can exist at the same time, which is radical truth, and also celebrating one’s life. And I think that I celebrated my sisters. I think the book is a love letter to them. I really do. I think that love is radical. I think that love is all goosey and lovey and going out to eat great meals and taking long walks and gazing into each other’s eyes. But I also think that sometimes it’s hard conversations. It’s hard truths. And I think that that looks a lot like love, too. And I think that’s what the book is. It’s a love letter. It’s like that’s what I said, it’s my love letter to myself. And that really comes through loud and clear as you’re reading how close you all are. Even when things are bad. It’s really clear that there is a lot of love in your world. Yeah. Which is the way that you hold opposing ideas in each hand with every scene is really important for readers, I think, because you give us a chance to breathe and to sit with what you’re saying. And to understand. I mean, you start with that lovely quote from Chekhov. Which is fantastic. But you’ve mentioned, Joseph Campbell, and Chekhov pops up quite a lot. And August Wilson, obviously, pops up quite a lot in your work. Who were some of your literary influences, though, because it’s clear, you’re a big reader, you understand how a book works and how a story works. So who are some of the folks who’ve made you who you are as a reader?
VD: Oh man, Claude Brown. Manchild in the Promised Land. That book was everything to me. Richard Wright, everything from Native Son to his autobiography, Black Boy, to a short story, who wrote that rocked my world and my African American Studies class, which was Big Boy Leaps Home, so I loved him. I loved Alice Walker. I love Nikki Giovanni. Loved Nikki Giovanni. Yeah, those were some of my influences. I always love people who were straight, no chasers. I always loved hearing the truth. I just felt like when people didn’t tell it, that’s when I felt that I didn’t belong. When I would read a lot of stories when I was younger. See Jane, see Jane run. And I’d read those little children’s books, I just always wanted to be Jane and I never was. And then it made me feel like crap. Whereas there were some books that allowed me in, like a big handshake, you know.
B&N: Now that you’re done writing your book, and the promotion will continue. But what are you most looking forward to reading? Is there anything on your TBR pile that you’re excited about?
VD: Oh, everything, because, you know, I was always reading books, in between scenes doing How to Get Away with Murder, I’ve always been working so much, there is a book on my shelf, well, there’s two books, I have a tendency to read a book, I love it, I get halfway through it, I get really busy, or I get angry, I get to emotional and I put it down. So the two books I want to pick up again, is A Fine Balance and A History of God, I want to finish those two. And I’ll be good for a minute.
B&N: That sounds great. The back of your jacket has a photo of you as a young girl. And it’s beautiful photo, and that little girl is beautiful. What would you say to her now, having written your book, because I’m going to assume that writing this book changed you a little bit?
VD: You know how it shifted me is it released me. That’s what it did. It’s what I would say to the young Viola, that she was enough, that she’s extraordinary. You know, Joseph Campbell says this too. He says, you know, when you leave your ordinary world and you answer your call to adventure, you are going to meet mentors and allies, and along the way who can light your path, and then you get to slay the dragons, and you’re not going to meet God on the road, you’re not going to come face to face with God in your radical transformation, you’re going to come face to face with you. That’s who you’re going to be staring straight at. You. And then you have to make a decision at that point, right? When you see yourself and your unsuccessful self, your successful self, your undesirable self, you make the decision to face and save yourself and become the person that you want to be and then you piggy back to your ordinary world. So I feel like I came face to face with me. I did with all of it. And I counted all joy I do. I don’t feel like I was cursed. I feel like I’m very much alive. And I feel like God placed everything in my life to make me an absolutely more compassionate individual.
B&N: And that seems like a really great place to wrap. That is really fantastic advice for life and readers are in for a treat with this book. It is indeed, it is a journey. It is a portrait of you. It is unforgettable. Viola Davis, thank you so much for joining us Poured Over.
VD: Thank you.