Viola Davis discusses How to Get Away with Murder, her legacy
Viola Davis said probably her proudest achievement was creating her breakthrough character Annalize Keating in the legal drama thriller “How to Get Away With Murder,” during an onstage interview Thursday at the Red Sea Film Festival in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Many in the ecstatic audience had greeted her with the words: ‘I love you, Viola.’
She also spoke about the courage it took to resist the orthodoxy that prevailed on network TV when the show launched a decade ago.
Variety publishes an edited excerpt from the interview below, which was as refreshing in its honesty as the actor’s performance.
“As a character [as originally envisaged]“She definitely didn’t feel like it,” she said, drawing laughter and applause from the audience. “I mean, you have to be honest about it: a lot of characters on television just don’t make sense. They are a Mr. Potato Head of an audience’s wishes. They want them to walk like supermodels and look beautiful in the costumes and in the courtroom scenes, whether they are wearing Alexander McQueen or Armani. They talk really fast in Shondaland, you know, faster than what people actually speak. You don’t really see people talking and listening, and I mean… I don’t want to sound like I’m messing around.
“And then you get into the topic of sexuality, and maybe there’s an abundance of women having 15 sexual partners a day, but what’s missing is the why.
“And so I got the character… her name was Annalize DeWitt when I first started, and I was like, DeWitt? So I changed that. I changed it to Annalize Keating. I mean, she could have been DeWitt, but it’s just so grand.
“But the reason why I think I’m proud of it is because I thought it was brave of me. I haven’t always been brave in my life, but that was a moment when I was brave. I had to make a decision: I could just join the group of women who work on TV and who, honestly, have a certain look in the leading roles.
“And the thing is, when you become a celebrity, you get all kinds of messages from people. It’s like Mark Twain said: You need two kinds of friends… The friends who talk about you, and the friends who tell you about people who talk about you. So you get a lot of friends who tell you about people who talk about you.
“So there’s so many people who said, ‘Oh, she misplaced one. Annalize Keating is described as mysterious and sexual and all that, and that can’t be Viola.”
“Sanford Meisner, a great acting teacher, said: One of the most important questions an actor can ask is, ‘Why?’ And if you ask: ‘Why?’ it takes you on a journey that can be transformative.
“And so, this is what I had to do: I had to at least try to lose weight and try to be that woman who could be on television, which isn’t going to happen. I was about 50 years old at the time. It’s not like I would start doing Botox and eating string beans.
“So then I had to ask some questions: Why do I have to be that woman? Why does she have to look great in heels? Why can’t I be the size I am? And why can’t all these things be true and I’m on network TV? Why can’t I take off my wig? Why can’t I wear my natural hair?
“And every time I asked, ‘Why?’ I found out the truth about who Annalize was, and so I had something to work with, which was to do my best writing on network TV to make her look like a human, and so that was the first thing I did with Annalize . Keating.
“I remember the phone call with Peter Nowalk, the showrunner creator of ‘How to Get Away With Murder,’ and Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers, and the head of the studio [ABC Entertainment Group]Paul Lee. We were all on the phone and I remember saying, I can’t believe I said this because I wanted the job, y’all, I didn’t want to lose this job, but I heard myself say it… I said, ‘ Well, I’m not doing this show unless she can take off her wig. And the reason is that when I take off the wig and the makeup, they have to deal with that woman who has been revealed. They will have to deal with her creased, curly hair. They will have to deal with the woman behind the mask. And that’s a character I could play.
“And then you have to wonder why a woman would be so sexual. You can’t just do it, because the thing is, with sexuality and human beings, it’s not pornography. Pornography sells sex, right? It’s to turn people on. It serves a purpose. Being sexual is an extension of who you are as a person. It’s based on memory, experience, trauma, everything. You don’t just do it.
“And then when you have sex, in my imagination, in my fantasy, every sex scene should be cringy. I mean, whoever has a camera in their bedroom, where it’s filmed perfectly, and everyone’s been to the gym for the last five months, no one puts down a towel. But I decided to hang out with the woman who was said to be bisexual, having affairs, married to a man who could be a murderer, and so her sexual history and her sexual abuse came up. That’s when Miss Cicely Tyson [who played Ophelia Harkness, Annalise’s mother] came into the picture. And then I felt like I was building a world that was honest; it was a world that was fantastic, but there were some kernels of truth in it that made people lean in, and that’s what I’m most proud of.
When later asked what her legacy would be, she added, “My legacy is to help people feel less alone. I really think there’s something sacred when the lights go down and you’re in the audience and you have your popcorn and your Sour Patch Kids and your Diet Coke. That’s what I eat, y’all. And there is something sacred in that relationship and that agreement. And the agreement is that as an artist I am not going to escape. I’m going to show you. You, with all that piss and poop, and all those private moments that you don’t want to show people, all the parts of you that you probably feel like if you shared with people it would be the most embarrassing part of your life. to live. I want you to be brave enough to witness that and acknowledge that, and I want to be brave enough to give it to you.
“And if I can do that, that would be a legacy. Not just the awards and accolades, but the courage of how good I can make that and give it to you.
