Viola Davis has gone candid about how being one of the very few young Black students at Julliard affected her
The Academy Award-winning star, 55, made the revelation in an interview with The Telegraph. She also spoke up about her film, M”a Rainey’s Black Bottom”, which earned her a Golden Globes nomination.
She reminisced about the time when she watched the theatre’s onstage adaption of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”.
“It was like I was watching a famous singer that I loved in private. Even though I didn’t even know who Ma Rainey was at all,” she said.
Viola Davis went on to talk about her time as a black student time at Julliard.
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“I can’t say that I’m not appreciative of my training there, but I did not find a sense of belonging. It was a place that taught classical, Eurocentric theatre as if it was the Bible and for me, as a chocolate, kinky-haired girl, there was no way in,” Viola Davis said.
“To perform in Shakespeare, or George Bernard Shaw, or Eugene O’Neill, I felt like what was required of me was to make any hint of my Blackness disappear, that it would somehow be a good thing if the audience could forget I was Black,” she added.
“There is still a sense that a woman has to look a certain way and be a certain age in order to be s*xual on screen. And if those rules are broken, they’re broken for white actresses only. And they’re wonderful white actresses Meryl Streep in ‘Hope Springs,’ or Diane Keaton in ‘Something’s Gotta Give.’ But I don’t feel like that same freedom has been extended to black women, especially dark-skinned black women. I simply don’t see it,” she continued.
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