Viola Davis gets emotional, Ted Danson spreads the love at Golden Gala

The room was filled with emotion, gratitude and appreciation on Friday evening as the Golden Globe Awards’ inaugural Golden Gala paid tribute to two special and beloved stars, Ted Danson and Viola Davis.

Danson took the audience at the Beverly Hilton through his journey as an actor as he accepted the Carol Burnett Award for his contributions to television throughout his long career. It all started when he was given the opportunity to bring the indelible character of Sam Malone to life on the NBC sitcom “Cheers,” which ran for eleven seasons from 1982 to 1993. That series’ creators and executive producers, brothers Glen Charles and Les Charles, were in the audience.

“Everything I have in my life, acting-wise, comes from all of you,” Danson told the Charles brothers. ‘I can’t thank you enough. You are brilliant.”

The kudo was presented by his wife of more than 30 years, actor Mary Steenburgen, who was there with many members of their extended family. And she didn’t hold back. Steenburgen noted that she fell for Danson after seeing him in commercials in the early 1980s. When ‘Cheers’ was released in 1982, she fell for him even harder. She thought Danson would be a slick Hollywood type when they finally met.

“How wrong I was,” she said. “Slick guys don’t say ‘gosh-a-rooney’ after making love,” she said, quickly adding: “I’d like to apologize to my granddaughters now.”

Steenburgen also cited Danson’s deep involvement in environmental issues and the nonprofit Oceana, which is committed to fighting the pollution and destruction of oceans around the world.

“Slick guys don’t have to fight for 35 years to keep the world’s oceans safe,” Steenburgen said. And in his professional life, “he has always known that it is a precious honor to take people on a television journey,” she said.

The presentation included segments from Danson’s many TV series over the years, from CBS’ “Becker” and HBO’s “Bored to Death” to his work with Larry David on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to dramatic twists on FX’s “Damages ” to NBC’s ” The Good Place” and his latest effort, Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside.”

Danson mentioned the many writers, crew members and artisans he has toiled with on sets over the years, from showrunners to hair and makeup professionals. Finally, Danson borrowed a line from the final episode of 1993’s “Cheers”: “I really am the luckiest son of a bitch on earth.”

Davis had mesmerized the audience when she was celebrated with the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Globes. Former DeMille honoree Meryl Streep presented the honor with a thought-provoking speech about how overwhelmed she was by Davis’ talent at the first table read of the script for the chilling 2008 drama “Doubt,” which Davis was the first of her four earned Oscars. nominations (she won for 2016’s ‘Fences’).

Davis was visibly moved by Streep’s introduction. She took the stage with tears streaming down her face.

“I feel like someone just set me on fire,” Davis said. She told Streep, “You’re just a great girl. You forgot I followed you to the bathroom that first day of rehearsal. I just wanted to smell you.”

From that moment on, Davis did what she does best. She captured the audience’s attention with her stentorian speech that was shockingly raw, personal and emotionally introspective. At times, her body trembled as she described the “magic” that acting has brought into her life.

“I was born into a life that simply didn’t make sense,” she explained.

Here are Davis’ full comments:

This is my testimony. I think I decided to become an actor because acting was just a cosmic trolley for a much higher journey. Finding me, finding a sense of belonging. Finding my worth.

I saw life as a big, fat guy. A Gordo with a big belly, eating a very fat, moist turkey leg. When he got up to go to the toilet, large nuggets of gold fell from his pockets and rained down on people. Some people received the blessings of the dripping gold. Gold just rained down on them because they worked for it. That’s how I saw life.

I was born into a life that simply didn’t make sense. I didn’t fit in. I was born in abject poverty. I was naughty. I was imaginative. I was boisterous. But I was so poor.

Grew up in a house where alcoholism and anger were rampant, where there were rats everywhere. Toilets that never worked.

I was a bedwetter who went to school wearing clothes soaked in urine. My life just had no meaning.
The only thing anyone ever said was that I wasn’t beautiful. Besides, what on earth is beautiful? I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t beautiful. I just wanted to be someone. I wanted some of those little nuggets.

What I had was magic. I was curious. I could teleport – I could take myself out of this shitty world and free myself from it sometimes.

I could go to a place where I can laugh. Where I can have fun. The biggest magic was being able to see people. I could see that woman standing on the corner, in freezing weather, with dirty hair and really bad acne. Smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes. In those corduroy jackets with fake fur on the inside. She would have those pants that all the women buy at the Rainbow Shop that cost $9.99 and were never zipped up properly.

I saw her standing there with dirty sneakers. Cars would come. She leaned forward, talked to the person in the car, exchanged words and got in.

Nobody cared about such people. She was my Mona Lisa. She made me curious. I would go in and show her around there. I’d go, ‘Who are you? Who were you when you were a little girl? You were so cute. You would dream big. You thought life was going to work out for you.”

There is always resistance to that one memory, that one thing you live for. I could always go there. It was magical.

The seeker is the mystery. The seeker must know. I was curious. All you need in life is curiosity. So that was acting.

So I began my journey and I was curious enough to know that not only could I work magic and inhabit these people, but I also knew what they could give me. What could I find in all these lives that could somehow rain down those nuggets of Gordo’s gold and give it to me and give my life meaning.

So I started this journey of acting. Let me tell you something, not to contradict you, but when I started my career, I took a lot of jobs because of the money.

Sometimes that was all there was for a dark-skinned black woman with a wide nose and big lips. If I waited for a role that was well crafted and written for me…

I don’t believe poverty is really the answer to your profession. I don’t think there is any nobility in poverty. I’ve seen too many rat-infested apartments. I have seen too many family members die or die from lack of healthcare. I’ve taken every job. It was an opportunity to get in there. Sometimes those nuggets rained down on me. I have the Mrs. Millers and the Annalize Keatings [roles]. And I’d be like, ‘Oh my god, I’m cooking. I’m going to be the next Meryl Streep.’

And then nothing. More often than not I got the dead characters. Like the woman standing on the street corner with the cigarette and the bad skin. The characters that are dead, that no one cares about, that no one loves. I have them.

I believe they came to me because they knew I would love them. I knew there was something very, very beautiful about them, where I could once again find that answer, that curiosity of why the hell am I here?

There is no one in this room who has not answered the question: why am I here? Each of these characters gave me an answer on some level.

I would do anything to bring them back together. I was a defibrillator.

Memories of my father’s deathbed. Memories of falling in love. Memories of bedwetting. Memories of belly laughs. I could fill in the blank and make them whole.

Somewhere along the journey of that – as Joseph Campbell says – when you go on that hero’s journey, the last stage is always a stage where you feel like you’re going to lose your life. You go to the inner cave. You don’t see God, you don’t see demons, you only see yourself.

And I have the elixir. That’s what acting gave me. The elixir was that it is mine. My life is orchestrated by me. That girl, little Viola, was enough. And the mystery is not understanding Gordo with the dripping turkey leg randomly handing out blessings.

What you need to figure out is you. Your story. You as you are – you are worth it. I had my ruby ​​slippers.
They say the only two people you owe anything to are your six-year-old self and your eighty-year-old self. Six-year-old Viola, sometimes I have to rely on her to give me perspective in this moment – ​​otherwise it’s too big for me to imagine. From bedwetting, poverty, despair and wrongness – to this? And little Viola squeaks.

She can’t believe she married the most handsome man in the world. She can’t believe she has a daughter whose heart has burst wide open. She can’t believe that despite the fact that she is smelly or naughty or messy and rough, she has friends who see all that but love her. And the thing is: they think she’s beautiful.

This is how little Viola squeaks. She is now standing behind me and pulling on my dress. She wears the same red rubber boots that she wore rain or shine because it made her feel pure.

She squeaks. She says one thing. She says, “Let them hear this.” What she whispers is: I told you I was a magician.

(The parent company PMC owns Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Prods. In a joint venture with Eldridge.)