“Girl, get up! Girl, get your fight back! Girl, get your power back! Girl, start acting like you are a King’s daughter and there has always been a crown attached to your head. Even when I was sick, I was still His! Even when I was dead, I was still His. Do you know who I am?”
—SARAH JAKES ROBERTS
Everybody has secrets. Everybody. I guess the difference is that we either die with them and let them eat us up, or we put them out there, wrestle with them (or they wrestle with us) until we . . . reconcile. Secrets are what swallow us.
There’s always one secret that drives the nail in the coffin for me. . . .
It’s as fresh in my memory as if it happened yesterday and yet . . . distant.
Two weeks before graduation, I woke up sick to my stomach and just knew. I got pregnant by my boyfriend of seven years. I remember taking my headshots that week and going to see Beauty and the Beast at the movie theater and all I kept thinking was I’m pregnant. I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that. It was an emotion far beyond scared. It was as if all the irresponsible decisions I had made had culminated into this. Ever since I started having sex, which was late in life, I didn’t know what I was doing. Yeah, you can learn about birth control but . . . how to love? How to be consistent and responsible, in control, create boundaries? Hell, even making sure you had the money to access condoms or birth control pills? The only commitment I had down, I felt, was my career, and that took EVERYTHING I had. All the other facets in my life overwhelmed me. Now . . . I was pregnant.
I remember I went to a clinic near Juilliard. I went early in the morning and had to cancel the first appointment because I had eaten. I came back the next day. I remember going into a lot of rooms. One room to check in and pay. One room to take another pregnancy test. Another room to put on a surgical gown. Each room was something out of a Stanley Kubrick film where you were getting closer to your demise. There were some very nice doctors who put me on a surgical table and I was put under.
I woke up terrified. I woke up as if being attacked. The pain was excruciating! More than any pain I’d ever experienced. They had told me there may be some pain, but man. . . . There is “what is said,” “what you heard,” and how it actually is, and this pain was NOT what I thought it would be. The recovery room was a bunch of folding chairs arranged in a circle. They placed huge pads on each chair to hold the bleeding from surgery. There was a woman in each one, and there were at least a dozen of them. They gave us apple juice and crackers. All around me were women vomiting in bowls and screaming or moaning in pain. One woman kept crying, “I couldn’t keep this one! I couldn’t! I already have five and no money!” Another girl who looked fifteen kept screaming, “MOMMY!!!! MOMMY!! I want my MOMMY!!!” Me? I just cried . . . and vomited . . . and cried through the pain until it was gone. I went home and bled profusely for two weeks and fell into a life-altering depression.
Hell, I remember calling my boyfriend, yelling at him, “Where are you! Why aren’t you here?” He thought what I did was wrong, and yet there was every probability that he wouldn’t be there for me or the baby. There were no resources financially or emotionally—at all. Once again in my life, I had to rely on the Santa Claus theory to get through major, life-changing obstacles. I was always asked to rely on miracles. My boyfriend finally came to New York to hold me for a day and then left. It was a perfect reminder that as much as I thought I had evolved into a mature woman, I hadn’t. There was no escaping brutal life accidents that can stop you and render you completely frozen.
The big clots of blood were a constant reminder that I terminated a life, and I absolutely, without question, knew it was a life . . . which I had traded for my own life. Try dealing with the weight of that shit!!!
My mom started having children when she was fifteen, and I wanted my life to be different. This baby didn’t fit into my dreams. Who was I without my dreams? The bigger the dream, the more the shame of that little third-
grade Viola could disappear. The bigger the dream, the more people would not call me those names I was running from. The bigger the dream . . . I could be worthy.
I felt almost desperate to explain this to God in exchange for forgiveness . . . to be cleansed.
I have a Jewish friend who is Modern Orthodox. He said one of his rabbis said, “It’s futile to ask why. Instead ask yourself, ‘What did I learn from this?’”
What have I learned from all of it? There is absolutely no way whatsoever to get through this life without scars. No way!! It’s a friggin’ emotional boxing ring, and either you go one round, four rounds, or forty rounds, depending on your opponent. And by God, if your opponent is you . . . you will go forty. If it’s God, you’ll barely go one because Big Daddy has rope-a-dope down! He’s a shape-shifter. You think you’re fighting him, screaming, punching, begging him for help. And he leaves you with . . . YOU.
Anton Chekhov, the great Russian playwright, once said, “The same time you’re laughing hysterically, your life is falling apart.” It is the definition of living.
My graduation meal when I finished Juilliard was joyous and hysterical. Me and one of my great friends, Cedric, who graduated with me from Juilliard, sat on the floor of his room and ate pickled pigs’ feet and Champale. We sucked on the cartilage, fat rich pig bones soaked in vinegar. Loudly proclaiming through laughter that we would never tell anyone about this. We were done! We had made it through an emotional, ego- and soul- crushing artistic war zone.
I graduated from Juilliard. Let me tell you something. I was a poor kid and now I was a poor adult. I had a hotshot agent and . . . nothing happened. I would audition, get a callback, and then someone else would get it. Or I wouldn’t get the audition at all because I was too young, too old, too dark, not sexy. In the meantime, life keeps moving. Rent is due. Phone bill is due, subway fare, food, student loans. All the stone-cold reality stuff I hadn’t factored in. Well, I had, but I just didn’t understand the weight of it. At this point, I was sharing a brownstone with six other students from Juilliard and they were having a hard time, too. Eventually, one got dozens of commercials and a soap opera. One got a big job out of school but when it
was over was back to auditioning. One left NYC entirely and the other was still in school.
I had a couple of big “aha” moments. The first was that we were living the reality of being artists. The mentality pervasive in social media is that you have to be “The boss bitch.” You have to call your agent and tell THEM the roles you want or, hell, write it yourself. I beg young actors not to listen to that.
The actors who are privileged are the ones who have the mic. They are being interviewed because they’ve reached the height of their careers and those testimonies are released on social media like vomit. We consume them and, having no way into the reality of the acting business, we take it in as truth. If you hit big when you’re young and turn down a six-figure salary, You. Are. Privileged. That’s not throwing shade. Hell, anyone would love it if that were their path. But struggle is defined by not having choices, and the actor who takes the Geico commercial to get their insurance has just as much integrity as someone who doesn’t take it waiting for their Academy Award–winning role.
An actor called me ecstatic because her commercial got picked up and she qualified for Plan 1 insurance for her family. She has two children, one of which had health issues. Life is happening as your career is happening. Stone-cold life. I realized my joy is not just attached to artistic fulfillment, but life fulfillment. I had $56,000 in student loans. My fibroids were growing. I would bleed for weeks at a time. I was badly anemic. I had alopecia areata. I woke up and on the right side of my head, my hair was gone. It was clean as a baby’s butt. The knee-jerk response is go to the doctor. I would’ve if I had had health insurance. I could go to cheap clinics, but fibroids, anemia, alopecia required comprehensive care. Ongoing help from qualified ob-gyns and dermatologists. It would be years before I made enough to qualify for Plan 1 health insurance or Equity insurance.
My other “aha” moment was the power, potency, and life force of the one-two punch of colorism and sexism. Almost every role I auditioned for were drug-addicted mothers. I auditioned for a few roles that were low- budget for a woman of color, but all of them were described as light- skinned. All! The others were soap operas where I would be sitting in the audition waiting room with models.
Black rom-coms were happening. There were awesome shows on TV that displayed the cute Black girl who had autonomy and material wealth.
But none of those women looked like me. An agent told me the word all the casting directors used when on the phone: “interchangeable.” That means even if you are a little darker, you have to have smaller, classical (read whiter) features. That wasn’t me.
What made it worse is that it’s not just presented by white executives, but also Black artists and producers. You begin to adopt the ideology of the “oppressor.” It becomes the key to success. Culturally speaking, many believe it and they have adopted the belief that if you are dark, you’re uglier, harder, more masculine, more maternal than your lighter-skinned counterparts. It’s the paper bag test mentality that many still refuse to believe.
In finding my way, the great role was not the biggest objective. Waiting tables to make ends meet until that awesome role came along was not the objective. I had to live: that was the objective. This was before streaming services. Studios weren’t churning out great roles for Black actors, at least not Black actresses my shade. It was either a great role or a good payday or a good profile or just a friggin’ job. You have no leverage if you do not work.
Here’s the truth. If you have a choice between auditioning for a great role over a bad role, you are privileged. That means not only do you have a top agent who can get you in, you are at a level that you would be considered for it. Our profession at any given time has a 95 percent unemployment rate. Only 1 percent of actors make $50,000 a year or more and only 0.04 percent of actors are famous, and we won’t get into defining famous. The 0.04 percent are the stories you read about in the media. “Being picky,” “dropping agents,” making far less than male counterparts. Never having any regrets in terms of roles they’ve taken. Yada, yada, yada.
He who has choices has resources. And the life needs of some twentysomething actor are not the life needs of everyone. Health insurance, mortgage, children are not the top priority of most twentysomethings. Yet the people who are aspiring to be actors and have no knowledge as to a way in listen to the testimonies of the privileged. The ones who were extremely talented, but also extraordinarily lucky. Luck is an elusive monster who chooses when to come out of its cave to strike and who will be its recipient. It’s a business of deprivation.
For every one actor who makes it to fame there are fifty thousand more who did exactly the same things, yet didn’t make it. Most of the actors I
went with to Juilliard, Rhode Island College, Circle in the Square Theatre, the Arts Recognition Talent Search competition are not in the business anymore. I think I can name six, and many, you wouldn’t even know. It doesn’t speak to their talent, it speaks to the nature of the business. Trust me when I say most were beautiful and talented, and some had incredible agents. It’s an eenie, meenie, miny, mo game of luck, relationships, chance, how long you’ve been out there, and sometimes talent.
You get auditions based on the level you are at. It’s hard to see when your journey to the top had more ease, but in reality, there is no ease. You do what the lucky person did, you have a 99 percent chance of it not ever happening for you. Only about 4 percent of actors in the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG- AFTRA) union make enough for Plan 1 health insurance and that’s $20,000 a year. That is our reality.
There is a way of thinking in our zeitgeist of not taking anything that is beneath you. That “I deserve” way of thinking is hard to reconcile in this business. A better question is this: Do you want to be an actor or do you want to be a famous actor? If you want to be famous, as the great Alan Arkin said, you will have a hard time. If you want to be an actor, you will find a way. Beware of the actor who says they’ve always turned down work but never made the choice to go do theater for $250 a week to feel fulfilled. Fame is intoxicating.
I was twenty-eight and waking up to reality. I was waking up to being an adult and taking care of myself but also navigating feeling fulfilled in my craft. They were diametrically opposed. I was also full of shit. On one hand, I was frozen. I was too scared of navigating the city and finding a “survival” job. I had so many survival jobs in the past and the thought of juggling that and auditions was becoming too much. On the other hand, because I auditioned for theater, film, and TV, I needed more space to prepare. I spent years preparing on buses and subways and stoops. I needed room to just focus on the work. That first year everything was hard and claustrophobic. I had moments, not of starvation, but of struggle. It was the real world of actually being an actor. My rent was $250 and even that was sometimes hard to raise, but I wanted to be great at what I did, despite not knowing how I was going to pay the bills. Speaking of bills, I talked on the phone way too much, I would ring up hundreds of dollars and would have
enormous phone bills. This is before cell phones and when you had to pay for long distance.
I ate wings every day. The quart of white rice at Chinese restaurants was
$1.20. The pint cost 60 cents. The chicken wings were $3 and I got them when I could afford it. Otherwise, my protein was the dried salty smoked herring I’d buy at the Spanish markets. I slept on a futon on the floor in a room I shared with my friend Pilar. My entire life had been struggle and survival. I’d been on my own since age seventeen. The fact that it was hard, shitty, was nothing new, but the biggest struggle was keeping hope and a belief in myself. Then, finding an artistic community for support while fighting my ass off to stay alive. Acting was my choice, maybe a masochistic choice.
My first job out of school was understudying Danitra Vance in a play at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater called Marisol by José Rivera. Danitra was the first Black woman on Saturday Night Live and created a famous sketch called “That Black Girl.” It was a parody of Marlo Thomas’s show in the ’70s, That Girl. Danitra was extraordinary. She wrote, sang, acted. She had metastasized breast cancer when I was brought in to understudy.
Danitra was doing chemo during the day and at night doing the show. The tumors had spread to her spine. I didn’t know until I was chatting with her one day in the dressing room and she took her shirt off. It was the first time I had seen a mastectomy scar.
I made $250 a week and loved it. I never went on the entire four or five weeks I worked. But I connected to Danitra. I remember helping her move and listening to her stories. I love listening to stories. When I heard she was dying, I called her and her voice was so weak.
She said, “How’re you?”
I said, “I’m fine.” I was going to complain about how hard it was to get work and to work consistently but it seemed too small now.
“How are you?” I asked. “I’m angry.”
Silence.
“Tell me what you’re angry at, Danitra.” I just wanted her to talk. Her voice was so weak and raspy. The cancer had spread and there was nothing the doctors could do. She was dying.
“I’m angry at this. I’m angry about dying.” “Danitra, I’m so sorry.”
“I know. I love you. I’m tired. I gotta go.”
A mutual friend of ours, Tommy Hollis, told me a story about Danitra. He said he saw a performance art piece of hers called “The Feminist Stripper.” She came onstage and began to take off items of clothing. She had music playing and was cracking jokes while stripping. Everyone was on the floor laughing and egging her on! She got down to her thong and her back turned to the audience, tantalizing them before ripping off her bra. She then turns around and reveals her mastectomy scar; a big X made of tape covered the scar. There was a collective silence, a brutal quiet in the room. They were forced to contend with the woman who was in that body and not just the body itself. Tommy said his heart stopped and he would never forget that experience.
She died about two months later. When she passed her final words were, “Y’all have a parade.”
Death, adulthood, responsibilities. All the stuff I never studied in school and no one talks about. And through it all, the work and auditions slowly started trickling in. There are not enough pages or memory cells to explain auditions. The casting director hired for a movie calls the agent based on the needs of the movie, TV show, or play involved. If you fit the breakdown, aka description, and if you have the visibility based on the pedigree of the project and if your agency is powerful enough, you will be called to the audition.
The roles, almost all where I fit the description, were drug-addicted mothers. My agent would send me in for the others. The roles for Black actresses that were described as “pretty” or “attractive.” I would put on my makeup, do my hair, and never, ever get those roles, even if the producers were Black. I took the jobs that were given to me. I went back to Trinity Rep and did two plays. I went on to work at the Guthrie Theater and worked with famed director JoAnne Akalaitis in a play called The Rover by Aphra Behn. I came back to Trinity Rep to do Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and Red Noses by Peter Barnes. It was during Red Noses when I got the call from my agent in NYC about August Wilson’s Seven Guitars.
The great Lloyd Richards would be directing it. I was so excited. It would go to Broadway but beforehand, it would be developed at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston,
A.C.T. (American Conservatory Theater) in San Francisco, and the
Ahmanson Theatre in LA. We would open a year later at the Walter Kerr Theatre in NYC.
I studied that script like crazy. The role was Vera. She had been dumped by her boyfriend, Floyd Barton, who went to jail and while in jail, the song he recorded hit it big. Now he was out and wanted me by his side. It was a beautiful scene of hurt, pain, longing, love. It was me. It didn’t require much for me to tap into that part of myself. I was so nervous for that audition but so excited. It was a big deal. I took the train to NYC and went in memorized or “off book,” as actors say. I was not off book back in the day for most theater auditions because they were always a lot of pages.
A TV/film audition was maybe a page or two. A theater audition could be nine, ten, or more. When you got them at the last minute, studying the character, play, background sometimes left very little room for memorization. But this was one of those rare occasions when I was off book. The words from the beginning were a part of me.
Lloyd Richards was a small, quiet man. He had directed the original production of A Raisin in the Sun with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, Diana Sands, and Glynn Turman. I really wanted this job. I was never an actor who was supercompetitive or had the courage to admit when I wanted something. I went with the flow. I was happy to say, “Hi! Yeah, my name is Viola Davis and I’m an actor.” But this day, I wanted it. And the casting director, Meg Simon, wanted it for me. She’d seen me come in and out over the years for so many roles and never book anything. The audition started and I felt good but not great. It was a scene that ended with a monologue about how angry Vera was about being left and how she longed for Floyd. It starts with anger and slowly morphs into her remembering how much she missed him, his touch.
There was silence.
Lloyd smiled at me and said in his soft voice, “I want you to do it again. This time I want you to think this, she doesn’t want to go there.” He was asking me to hold back until I couldn’t anymore. Those moments in life that you start off trying to communicate a thought to a significant other and suddenly a huge wellspring of hurt, vulnerability opens up and surprises you. So I did it again. It was a magic moment. The moment that is about preparation but also about luck, kismet, God. It’s where everything aligns. I finished and Lloyd said, “Thank you.”
I took the train back to Providence after talking to my agent and saying, “I think I had a great audition.” I have a tendency to downplay auditions. You may think you’ve had a great audition and get feedback and find out it was great but you didn’t get the part. Or you find out it was good, not great. Or you find, in the eyes of the producer, director, you simply sucked. It’s like Whoopi Goldberg said, “I’ve been bad, a lot. I’ve been good sometimes and I’ve been great just a few times.”
The next day, I found out I had gotten the part. I cried. I’ve only cried a couple of times when I got roles. But, man oh man. It was the first really big job in my career and I was over the moon.
By the time I got Seven Guitars, I had given up my apartment in NYC. I was never there. I was always on the road. That’s another aspect of the business no one talks about. Being away from home or never having one. It’s nomadic. Whatever housing they put you in becomes your home until it doesn’t.
The first stop in Chicago was brutal. The temperatures reached 38 degrees below zero. I spent my days off sitting on my couch with the heat blasting, another portable heater, and a huge blanket over me. I still shivered. Working in Chicago, Michigan Avenue, grocery shopping, working out during the day, and performing at night was the joy of my life. I was happy. I felt like I was growing and changing in a way that was surprising. I felt independent and safe.
Seven Guitars was a long haul. We went to the freezing cold of Chicago to the Huntington Theatre Company in Boston that at that particular time had a rat problem. Can you believe it? We would be chilling in the common room and a rat would run across the room! Geez. The great South African actor Zakes Mokae had joined the cast and little did we know, he was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s. He was a beautiful man but could not remember his lines. It was so bad in Boston that the production had four people with scripts stationed at various points near the stage ready to scream lines. And I mean scream.
Then, he would carry his script onstage . . . during the performance . . . with an audience. It became cruel and difficult. It epitomized the whole adage that the “Show must go on.” It also encapsulates the whole notion that in theater anything can happen when it’s live. It’s a preparation that you cannot even fathom. And it just got worse. By the time we got to San
Francisco, they had let Mokae go, which was heartbreaking. They hired an actor named Roger Robinson who was wonderful.
When you are doing a pre-Broadway run, the script is still changing. There are still rewrites, rehearsals. When we were in San Francisco at A.C.T., the play was four hours long and we were performing nine shows a week instead of eight. During the day, we rehearsed for eight hours. We were exhausted. During this time, I learned the hard-core lesson of what makes a great producer. The actor’s energy and health has got to be paramount. No one was sleeping or no one was sleeping enough. We literally were falling asleep onstage. I fell asleep on the set waiting to go onstage during a tech rehearsal. I woke up petrified not knowing where I was. But sweet, special, unforgettable moments were created as well. Tommy Hollis, who has since passed, played the character of Red Carter in the play. He was real country. I loved him.
We talked for hours at night. We talked about everything and anything. We complained about the show. We talked about the different comments from people who had come to see it. We talked about fears, hopes, dreams. He would make me neckbone sandwiches with hot sauce on it. Yup. And I ate it. He would leave me turkey, cornbread dressing, and cranberry sauce sandwiches at my door. Years later, after 9/11, I tried calling him like I always do and I couldn’t reach him. After a few days, I tried calling anyone I knew in NYC to go to his apartment. Roger Robinson finally did. He said he could smell the decomposition of his body when he went to his door. He had to get the apartment manager to open it. He had been dead for a week. Tommy was a beautiful, conflicted soul. I was devastated.
By the time we got to Los Angeles, we were swinging and dancing. Oh my God. Everyone came to see the show—Halle Berry, Angela Bassett, everyone. The driving was a pain in the ass. But when we left LA and rolled into NYC on a rainy day in late March 1996, we had a well-oiled machine. A lot about this business is anticlimactic.
It’s not as glamorous as you think, and it’s way more isolating. But man, Broadway? It lives up to everything you ever believed about what this business could be. It fulfills both the glamour and the work. It fulfills the community and comradery. It’s the stuff of dreams. More than Oscars. More than Emmys. Each of those has its own disillusionment. Broadway is everything; it lives up to every bit of that dream.
There are other moments in life that absolutely live up to the hype, like adopting my baby—the love you have for your children (even when they drive you crazy) is everything, absolute perfection as far as I’m concerned. Okay, that’s number one. Number two, getting married. I loved it! I didn’t have any stress. That’s why I had three ceremonies with my husband. Every one of them was among the most perfect days in my entire life. Winning an Oscar, a Screen Actors Guild Award—some perfect moments. But opening on Broadway on March 28, 1996, absolutely lived up to the hype. Perfect. It was everything that I dreamed it could be.
When I was a little girl dreaming of becoming an actress, I would say, “I want people to throw flowers at me onstage.” The opening night on Broadway of Seven Guitars was beyond fucking fantastic. It was like someone giving you a big jolt of adrenaline and the happiest drug in the world. Flowers are in your room. You get presents. And then you do the play! I’m never very good on opening night on Broadway. I’m always too nervous. But it doesn’t matter. When the play opens, critics have already been there. After opening night is when all the reviews come out.
I remember being so nervous from the anticipation of it all. Waiting for the reviews and how or if the plays land is anxiety inducing. Especially when you’ve worked on a play for a year, developing it, cutting, replacing actors . . . etc. Seven Guitars was just that, seven characters in harmony. Vera gets to her final monologue. She talks about a vision she had after burying Floyd Schoolboy Barton, the love of her life.
“. . . I tried to call Floyd’s name but wouldn’t nothing come out my mouth. Seem like he started to move faster. I say the only thing I can do here is say good-bye. I waved at him and he went on up in the sky.”
A brutal piece of writing and one I knew would land with my parents who were believers in myths, spirits, and rituals. It was a play where they not only could see my work but writing that was about THEM. When we ended our opening Broadway show of Seven Guitars after the curtain call, the lights came up, cameras from the television station glared in my face, everybody in their tuxedos and gowns was standing up clapping and shouting in thunderous applause and I saw MaMama and Daddy. Daddy was crying, clapping, staring at everybody, and I could tell his heart was pounding out of his chest. He looked beautiful; he had on a black tuxedo; he could always “clean up nice.” My mom was clapping uncontrollably. I had put them in a hotel across from the theater and they were so happy. It was a
Best Western but it might as well have been the Four Seasons. Having my family there, my friends, was everything I could possibly imagine.
The after-party was in the big ballroom at the Marriott Marquis. Halle Berry, Laurence Fishburne, other wonderful actors I had always admired were there.
Everybody comes to Broadway. There was an intercom in everybody’s dressing room. After every performance, the stage manager downstairs would get on the intercom and say, “Vanessa Redgrave is here to see the cast members from Seven Guitars. Denzel and Pauletta Washington are here to see the cast. Barbra Streisand here to see Viola Davis, Rosalyn Coleman, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Michelle Shay, Tommy Hollis, Keith David.” Everybody comes to meet you. Literally. I can’t tell you how many people I ran into—producers, directors, agents—who saw me back then doing Seven Guitars.
But before opening night, it’s the work. It’s the payoff of the work. Lloyd Richards was very big on ensemble work, actors becoming a company. He wasn’t big on above-the-title names and single-card billing; the business of acting, he wasn’t into. He believed that it took a lot of time for a whole cast to become a company of actors who were in sync with one another. It wasn’t until the last rehearsal in New York where he gathered us onstage, talked about his experience and how awesome it was to work with us, that he finally looked at us with laser focus and said, after a long pause: “And now, you are a company!” Lloyd represented the last vestiges of the old-school mentality. One that has indeed become a relic.
Everything was earned. Seven Guitars was a huge part of my growth as an actor. It was the difference between making the decision to become an actor, then training to become the best actor I could be, and finally putting everything that I learned to task. It also taught me a lot about life. There are no words to describe “The stage door.” It’s the door of the theater that you exit after the performance. Usually, people in the audience wait there to see you. It’s not something that is present when you do TV/film.
Sometimes you never meet your fans or foes unless you’re at the grocery store or Target. In theater, you are face-to-face with them every night. I learned about the graciousness of other actors and commitment to support and community. I have also experienced the other side. The cruelty and jealousy that is rampant in a business that has a lot of depravity.
Jealousy is the cruelest of emotions. The part that makes it cruel is its lack of ownership.
Despite the good and the bad, I got a Tony nomination. I watched the Tonys every year. I would always run into school and ask anyone, “Did you see the Tonys last night?” I was always alone on that front. It usually was just me and my high school friend Angelo. Well, here I was getting a Tony nomination. I found out by checking my answering service. This was back in the day when you had to purchase an answering service. It was usually
$6 or $10 a month. You could call from any phone at any time and check your messages. I went home to Rhode Island to relax the morning of the Tony nominations. Then I checked my messages and it was my agent Mark Schlegel telling me to call him. I got him on the phone and he said, “Viola. You got a Tony nomination!” I flipped out. I was at a pay phone. I flipped! I took the bus to my parents’ house and ran in screaming, “I GOT A TONY NOMINATION!”
My mom, dad, and baby nieces and nephews started screaming, “Yay, Auntie.” They didn’t know what it meant but they were happy for me. They jumped all over me. In a world and in a business where friendships morph, change, where trust, love, and loyalty are elusive, this stands out as a great memory.
My agent Mark said to me, “Viola, you have great parents.” His statement shocked me. I said, “I do?” He said, “Yes. They are great.” I asked him why he said that. He said, “I’ve been in this business a while and have seen a lot of stage parents. It becomes more about them and not about their kids. Your parents are not that way at all. They just want to see you fly. They’re just happy for you.” It was a seed planted that made me look at my parents in a completely different light. It woke me up.
My first awards show was the Tonys. I remember Nathan Lane hosting. Savion Glover from Bring in da Noise! Bring in da Funk, directed by George C. Wolfe, performed. The cast from Rent performed. My sister Dianne came with me and she just kept saying, “Wow! Omg! I can’t believe this. I can’t. I can’t believe I’m here.” Seeing the great Zoe Caldwell win for Master Class and Audra McDonald for the same play. In my world, I had made it, whatever it was. I had made it because I was simply in their company. And just like film, with all the awards precursors, theater has its awards precursors.
The Outer Critics Circle Awards, the Drama Desk, the Drama League, and the Theatre World Awards for Outstanding Broadway debut—I won that one and I was over the moon. I didn’t have to hear about awards prognosticators. This was before Google and awards sites and unknown people being given a media platform weighing in on who gave the best performance. It was untouched by outside influencers with little knowledge of what we do as artists. Except of course the critics of the day: John Simon, Frank Rich, Vincent Canby. But even they had a certain amount of weight and aesthetic that was earned. It was good times.
But this renewed joy was like a seesaw. My sister Danielle had her first child at seventeen. We all tried to keep her on the right track but she went through the teen years and started to rebel. None of us were around at that point. Her first baby’s name was Derek. A beautiful baby. My parents were still living in poverty. I helped in every way I could while living in NYC, paying student loans, managing expenses; that little girl with the snot dripping down her nose and running for her life felt a huge responsibility. I was driven by the need to save everyone. I felt if I saved anyone, I had found my purpose, and that was the way it was supposed to work. You make it out and go back to pull everyone else out.
My parents were living on Parker Street in the first-floor apartment now. A low salary as an actor on Broadway is $1,500 a week. When I got on Broadway with Seven Guitars I was making $2,500 plus a $500 bonus because I got the Tony Award nomination. It felt like real money especially when combined with other gigs, or whatever, on the side. Seven Guitars ran for over a year in various cities, which is a long run for a show. On the road, I was making $1,500 a week and I was put up in, at the time, what I felt were really nice apartments. By the time it got to NYC, you’re on your own. I had to look for another place to live because I had given up my apartment the year before.
Looking for a place to live in NYC is a harrowing undertaking. One that can bring you to your knees. I found a place with three other people. One was an actor I knew from Trinity Rep. It was a huge apartment on the Upper West side. I, once again, agreed to it sight unseen because I was on the road and didn’t want the stress of looking for a place and juggling a Broadway opening. Thankfully, it did not mirror my experience with Susan’s apartment. But, man, did I hold my breath when I opened that door.
A change started happening regarding the kind of money my family would ask me for. When you’re making maybe $600 a week and you’re working more than anyone else in the family, they’ll ask for $20, $25. When you’re on Broadway, they’ll ask for $100 and $200. Family starts counting your money because they always feel like you’re making more than you are. Later, it starts getting into the territory of “Buy me a house. Buy me a car.” If you’re not careful, you will go under, because the need is too great, too consistent.
I have gotten more calls than I can remember to pay gas bills, grocery bills. At first, I would send money for food. The food would last for two or three days. Then they’d ask me for more. Then I started buying the food myself, getting it delivered, once that service was available. The need is endless. It’s depleting. You’re in the process of healing yourself, you’re running on reserves. Success is absolutely wonderful, but it’s not who you are. Who you are is measured by something way more abstract and emotional, ethereal, than outward success. Seven Guitars began a domino effect.
My dad changed considerably. He was still drinking a lot, but his rage binges had just about stopped cold. A kind, loving gentleman emerged. It was all about helping my mom, catering to her needs. They had gained custody of my brother’s sons. John, my brother’s firstborn, was born with withdrawal symptoms. His mom, my brother’s girlfriend, gave birth while she was on the street and high on crack cocaine. It was literally subzero weather and she was prostituting and went into labor.
Little John’s withdrawal symptoms were so bad, you felt you had to hold him tight or else he would just bounce out of your arms. He was in the hospital for a long time. I would come early in the morning around 8:30
a.m. or 9 a.m. By the time I got there, my dad had already been there for hours. He would walk from Central Falls to Pawtucket, take the bus to downtown Providence, and walk the rest of the way to Hasbro Hospital. It was a brutal journey in the dead of winter but he and my mom, but mostly my dad, was there every day. My dad would just hold the baby and continually whisper to him how much he was loved. My brother’s second child, Daniel, was born a few years later and my parents gained custody of him, too. My brother and his girlfriend had none of the resources to help.
Their burden became my burden. I didn’t know how to say no to requests for food, money, payment for utilities. The needs were so great and
began to escalate. I didn’t know that my brother’s problems were not my problems. I had created a life for myself and I would ask God constantly, When do I get to enjoy it fully? Plus, I simply didn’t have the money.
The only predictor of a play closing is how many tickets it sells. If it doesn’t sell, you’re looking at a very short run, and when it’s over, you will be collecting unemployment if you don’t have a job lined up.
All the weekly payments are before taxes and before paying your agents. Your agents receive 10 percent of anything you earn in acting and Uncle Sam takes his cut. When you work in theater, film, or TV, they fly you out and put you up. In theater, they choose the housing and they fly you economy. In film and TV, they fly you first class and put you up in five-star accommodations and give you a per diem. Not everyone’s five-star accommodations are the same and not everyone’s per diem is the same. It’s all based on clout, box office potency, and the serious negotiating skills of your agent. If an actor is blessed and fortunate enough to see a million dollars, deduct taxes, 10 percent for your agent, 10 percent to your manager if you have one, 2 to 5 percent to a lawyer, and at least $3,000 to $15,000 a month to a publicist.
Why do you need a lawyer? The lawyer knows how much money is on the table. Legally makes sure everything has the right jargon in your contract, and most importantly lawyers have the inside track on what other actors on your level get paid. The budget of the film, your role, and your standings in the business determine your pay. The fucked-up part is that you don’t necessarily get paid for talent. You get paid for “getting butts in the seat.” The caveat is that with most people of color, your films are not distributed and promoted enough to ensure butts in the seat and it keeps you hustling as far as pay is concerned.
Theater is a different beast. I never thought of myself as struggling during this time period. Even though at one point, I did a play in Newton, Massachusetts. I stayed in my sister’s unfinished basement in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Walked to the bus stop thirty minutes away to catch the greyhound to Boston. Yup! The bus again. Once I got to Boston, I would walk to the T and take the train thirty minutes to Newton where I performed in a church.
The play was Jar the Floor by Cheryl West directed by Woodie King Jr. Then Keith Glover’s Coming of the Hurricane at the historic Black theater Crossroads in New Jersey. God’s Heart by Craig Lucas at the Mitzi E.
Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. Then Everybody’s Ruby by Thulani Davis directed by Kenny Leon. I just followed the work.
Earlier in my career when I did The Rover at the Guthrie Theater, I lived in Minneapolis for six months and it was a turning point for me. I was twenty-eight and when I went back to NYC when the play was done, I had an epiphany. I was in the living room of our brownstone in Brooklyn and I was talking to my friend, housemate, Juilliard classmate Michelle O’Neil. In the middle of the conversation, I just threw out a random statement, “I wonder why I keep meeting assholes?”
She looked right through me and said, “Did you ever think it could be you?” At first, I thought the statement was born out of a grudge she had against me for never sharing my food at school. I was downright hostile toward anyone who asked me for food, and she was one of them. But she said it so matter-of-fact. The kind of truth that’s like a hundred-pound hammer that knocks the wind out of you.
I remember I had my short, black minidress with my platform ’70s-style heels. I had my braids and cowry-shell necklace. I thought I had my signature style, look. It was unapologetic, authentic, but it was clothing. She wasn’t looking at that. She was looking at me. I was trying hard not to be seen. My style was my distraction. As fate would have it, soon after that my friend Gary who lived in LA suggested therapy because he was in it. I said I couldn’t afford it. It hovered there through all our conversations.
The thought of sifting through all my shit and reconciling me . . . it almost felt like cleaning all that trash and miscellaneous junk under our beds at 128 and fearing rats jumping out and biting us. My last image of the rats was our basement after a major flash flood. The basement was flooded, killing the whole litter of our dog Cocoa’s pups. She tried to swim and swim, whimpering to save them. Every time we tried to grab her, she growled, bit, and jumped back into the flooded basement searching for her babies. When the water subsided, they were found dead and partially eaten by the rats. I was afraid of being consumed, drowned, left, abandoned. Unloading my shit felt like major surgery that had a high propensity for death.
Another obstacle to getting therapy was the fact that I just couldn’t find a way into TV and film. Screen Actors Guild health insurance would pay for ten free sessions a year of therapy. I’m sure my agents were frustrated that I hadn’t booked anything onscreen. At first, I thought it was my hair. I
had started doing my own hair to save money. I would buy ZZ curl hair from His and Her Hair shop in LA. It’s crinkly curly hair but silkier and longer. I would buy it and get it shipped to me and sit down in front of the TV and proceed to braid it into my hair. I braided in a lot of hair. By the time I finished, it looked like a huge Afro of loose curls. I loved it! It was me but I don’t know if the industry shared my sentiment. In hindsight, I could see their eyes widen when I walked in the room. I just ignored it because, really, I didn’t know what to do about it. I couldn’t be another me.
One day I got an audition for a Steven Soderbergh movie called Out of Sight. My agents put me on tape at their offices. I remember by this point I was so tired of going to audition after audition for TV/film that I just said the lines. I put nothing on them. The character was Moselle, who was very stoic and was just over it. So every line was, “I don’t know where he is? Nope. He ain’t home.” I also had absolutely no hope I would get it because I had to play Don Cheadle’s girlfriend.
I never got girlfriend roles, even if you saw the girlfriend without the boyfriend. It was almost as if there was a type called “Girls that nobody desires.” I did it and forgot about it. I especially forgot because I hate being put on tape. Auditions are way more potent in the room. Nevertheless, I forgot about it. Three weeks later my agent called and said, “You know that role you auditioned for in the Steven Soderbergh movie?” Oh my God. I waited for the bad feedback; by the way, you will absolutely, without question, get bad feedback in your career. I waited for him to tell me that they thought my damn hair was too big.
I said, “Yeah,” in my little girl voice. He said, “Well, you got the part.” I was in shock. Shock. It was three days of work in Los Angeles and Detroit. My scenes were with Jennifer Lopez, Don Cheadle, and Isaiah Washington. I was in shock. I danced around my apartment. I was going to make more than $1,000 a day. Compare that to the theater. So imagine my excitement. I asked Steven later what got me the role and he said, “It was the combination of your stillness and that big hair.” Bam! The damn hair did something.
Shortly after that, I booked a role in an HBO movie called The Pentagon Wars that shot the same time as Out of Sight in LA! Once you get one role in TV/film it’s a domino effect. All of a sudden, the same people who didn’t cast you look at you and say, “Where have you been?”
I arrived in LA to shoot both projects. For The Pentagon Wars, I shaved my head. Which in hindsight, I think, What? But I was playing a woman in the military and wanted to be authentic. I always wanted to be authentic.
I stayed at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in LA and was lonely as hell. They gave me a car, but I was terrified of driving. Literally. I would have the biggest panic attacks in LA behind the wheel of the car. Luckily, the soundstage where we shot was right down the street, so I didn’t have to drive far. I worked with Cary Elwes, Kelsey Grammer, and Olympia Dukakis. Yup. I thought I had broken the barrier of being a working actor making money.
I worked out every day. Ate great food and had found a therapist who lived right up the street. I loved her, well, as much as you could love a person who pulled your insides out. She would tell me that I wouldn’t know how to cross the street if it weren’t covered in piss and shit. I had normalized the piss and shit. She would also say, “Viola, what if you didn’t change all the parts of yourself that you are not happy with? What if you just stayed, you? Could you be happy with that? Could you still love yourself?” It almost became a moment like the one I had with a different therapist years later who told me to allow my younger self to hug me. Hell, SAG was paying her $100 per hour to tell me that? It took me the longest time to answer that question verbally and even longer to answer it internally.
I still felt awkward. I was still trying to fit in—I don’t know where— just feel right. I just wanted to feel like who I was meant to be. I was still running from those boys. I was still staring into the hate-filled, disgusted eyes of my tormentors and feeling like they represented the overall consensus that I was worthless.
I finished The Pentagon Wars and had my hair done. This time, Universal hired a professional to do my hair extensions. I shot my scene in Out of Sight with Don Cheadle and Isaiah Washington and felt like a real, respected actor. The hair, makeup, trailer, and set just blew my mind. No audience present like theater. No rehearsal. No spending weeks with other actors trying different choices, seeing what works and doesn’t work. No time to establish trust. Film and TV is about preparing and leaping. When the movie is finished you watch yourself. I love it but the trap has always been the self-consciousness that comes from watching oneself. No one
watches themselves in life, which is what we as actors are mirroring. We just . . . live.
I was trying to connect where the beginning of the dream started to getting to this moment. They put me in a leopard print robe. I had to smoke a cigarette. I remember being introduced to Jennifer Lopez for the first time. We got along great. She said it was her first big job, too.
I had to finish up another part of my scene in Detroit a few weeks later with Jennifer. Detroit was freezing. They put me in a huge suite in a hotel and I was stunned. I remember looking around with my jaw to the ground. Then, ironically, I couldn’t sleep in the bed. It was a nice king-size bed, but it sort of dipped in the middle. The suite was cold and really dark when the lights went out. I had flashbacks of my childhood. Images of urine-soaked mattresses and cold rooms because the heat was cut off. I slept on the couch and kept the lights on all night. I really didn’t sleep. But filming was awesome. Jennifer wanted me to drive in her car with her. We chatted about all kinds of things and shivered. Then it was over.
Soon after that, I had made enough money for health insurance. My fibroids were so bad I looked six months pregnant. I was so anemic from constant bleeding that I would fall asleep standing up in the subway. I also developed a really bad habit of eating cornstarch. My mom would eat it growing up as did many people down south. I later found out it was from a condition caused by low iron levels called pica. The symptoms are cravings for weird textures such as ice, rubber, and even starch. It was an embarrassing habit because I was always trying to hide it. Finally, I decided my fibroids needed to be removed. I had them removed during Thanksgiving and I had nine of them. They were enormous.
My mom was there with me in NYC. I remember the head resident came into the room with five residents behind him. “Okay. This is a patient who had a myomectomy. Uhh . . .” He looked at my mom sitting in a chair beside me. “Uhh . . . Ma’am, can you please leave the room?” My mom, without missing a beat, said loudly, “No.” He was in shock. “You heard what I said; no. I know my rights. You can talk all you want to but Imma stay right here.” He was silent. Turned around and walked out. When he left my mom whispered, “Vahla. Me and ya daddy saw this on a program late one night. They said never leave anyone in the room alone with the doctor. You don’t know what they gon’ do when you leave.” I’m sure she was having flashbacks to the time the doctor wanted to break my legs when I
was two. She stayed by my side. She ate all my food because I had little appetite. My friend Michelle came one day to visit me. My mom was just sitting there. “Vahla? You ain’t gon’ eat that food? Give it to me.” Michelle, who was trying to get pregnant, said, “Mrs. Davis? Do you remember giving birth?”
“Yup,” in between eating the hell out of a turkey gravy meal. “Dianne cost $25. John cost $25. Vahla cost $25. Deloris was expensive. She cost
$30.” By this point we were laughing. “What do you mean, Mom?” I said. “Vahla! That’s what we had to pay Miss Clara Johnson, the midwife.” “But Mom, Michelle wanted to know what it was like giving birth.”
“I don’t remember no pain.” She was quiet. “But MaMama and Daddy did lie to me about the pain with ya brother John when I was fifteen. They say it wasn’t gon’ hurt. They lied to me. I don’t remember no pain after that. All this stuff that people do now and tellin’ you what you can and can’t do. What you can or can’t eat. Shiiitt. I didn’t do nothing like that and I had six children.”
It was the first time I felt the weight of the operation I just had. The benign tumors that had been removed would form scar tissue and adhesions. I would have a small window of time after recovery to have a baby or would be rendered infertile. I had no significant other in my life and was already in my early thirties. Once again, the reminder that life was happening as my career was happening. I just suppressed it. I had time. Right?
Soon after my recovery I would get a fateful job at Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. I played the role of Ruth in A Raisin in the Sun. I had gone to Los Angeles before this time to shoot The Shrink Is In with Courtney Cox and David Arquette. Richard Benjamin, who directed The Pentagon Wars, cast me. Like I said, getting one job in TV/film creates a domino effect of relationships and connection.
While I was in LA, Steven Bochco called me to audition for City of Angels. It was touted as an all-Black drama. Blair Underwood was cast in the lead role. Steven Bochco created Hill Street Blues and LA Law. I had a great audition, but I got feedback that I wasn’t right for the part. They kept saying things like, “Uhh . . . she was great, but too quirky, too different.” In reality, I wasn’t pretty enough. At this point, it was the story of my career. So I just forgot about it and went back home to Harlem where I now lived.
I then booked A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. I played Ruth. Kimberly Elise played Beneatha, Gloria Foster was Mama, and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who wrote the screenplay to August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, was Walter Lee. Jack Hofsiss directed.
Williamstown is a summer stock theater where all actors go to legitimize themselves or just get back to the work. It takes place on the Williams College campus. All the actors live in dorms or homes. It’s about getting down to the bare bones minimum and just focusing on the craft. I lived in the dorms. I loved hanging and talking with the actors at night. I was in therapy and would have phone sessions once a week. My therapists would always say, “You’re not poor anymore. You’re not that little girl with no shoes or hot running water.”
During Raisin one of my castmates, Joseph Edward, who played Bobo, asked me a more potent question, “Why don’t you have anyone in your life? You seem really smart. You’re a nice woman. Why don’t you have someone in your life?”
Joseph and I had a great friendship of transparency and respect. “I don’t know.” I almost cried when he asked me that.
It was a question that seared through my soul. One that I refused to even ask myself. By this point, I was a few years from my fibroid surgery. I was alone but not lonely, or so I thought. I was good if I didn’t think too deep.
“Have you prayed for someone to come into your life?” He just stared at
me.
That’s what he asked me next. It was a big moment for me. I said, “No,
but I’m doing the work. I’m in therapy. I’ve gotta clean things up before I can invite anyone into my life to love me.”
There was silence.
He said, “This is what I want you to do.”
I was so sensitive about not having anyone in my life that I paid attention to him.
He said, “Do you know what you want?” “Yes, I know what I want,” I said.
“Are you sure you know what you want? You gotta be sure you know what you want.”
“Joseph, I’m sure about what I want,” I said. “I’m a grown woman.” “Okay, this is what I want you to do. When you go to bed at night, I
want you to get on your knees and ask God for exactly what you want.”
I did not have anyone in my life but I had no response to this surprise advice.
He said, “You just give God your list. The frivolous stuff and the meaningful stuff.”
I was skeptical that this advice would change my situation. He said, “You got it?”
“Okay, Joseph.”
He said, “Are you gonna do it?” “I will. I’ll do that.”
He said, “Are you sure?” “Yeah, I’ll do it.”
He said, “You gotta be really specific.” “Mm-hmm. I will do it.”
I don’t pray at night. At least, up to that point I didn’t. I got in bed that night and I remembered Joseph’s words. I thought, I’m not getting down on my knees. After twenty or thirty minutes lying in bed, I thought Okay! I got out of bed. I got down on my knees. I clearly remember how I opened my prayer: “God, you have not heard from me in a long time. I know you’re surprised. My name is Viola Davis.” I continued like this, repeating my name since God and I hadn’t been acquainted for such a long time: “I’m Viola Davis. I’m at Williamstown Theatre Festival right now. A friend of mine told me to pray and ask you for what I want. I believe in you. I’m gonna believe that you’re gonna deliver and I’m gonna ask you for what I want.”
I brainstormed a list. I told God the list. I said I wanted a big, Black man who was an ex-athlete, preferably a football player, because I love football players. “I really want him to be Black, but he doesn’t have to be Black, God. I mean at the end of the day, I really, really want him to be Black, God. And I love southern men, I love country men, God, so I want someone real country.
“And I don’t want any pressure to have children, so I want him to have had a wife before me and children already, so that’s settled. I want someone who trusts in you and loves you, God, because then he will be accountable to someone—you, God.” None of the men I’ve ever dated were accountable to anybody. They just did and said what they wanted. And they were completely emotionally unavailable and that’s what I said, too. “I want him to be emotionally available and understand what I do as an actor.” I was
getting up off my knees and before I climbed back in bed, I said, “I promise I’ll start going to church” and thought If you give me what I want, the church may blow up when I walk in there. After that last bit of bartering, I said, “Amen.”
This was toward the end of the Raisin run. I learned I had landed the role in City of Angels but I almost didn’t go back to LA to take it. They were giving me a series regular role but only paying me $5,600 per episode and only guaranteeing me ten episodes. $5,600 an episode sounds like a lot of money, but after New York City and New York State taxes—because I was still a New York resident—Los Angeles taxes, and federal taxes, I was left with $2,200. Most actors make at least three times more than that for their first series regular job. But the network was not sold on an all-Black drama, so Bochco had to use his own money. Hence the low salary.
My agent received 10 percent on top of the taxes I had to pay. I had to move and live in LA for seven months. I had to rent a car and an apartment. I had to pay housing in New York and LA because the pipes had burst in my apartment in New York and the ceiling had caved in, so I couldn’t get anyone to sublet that Harlem rental. But I decided to take City of Angels even though it was not a lucrative job and it required the move to LA, which is as expensive as New York.
With three films under my belt, The Shrink Is In, Pentagon Wars, and Out of Sight, and TV work that had never seen the light of day, I moved to LA to start City of Angels. Despite the crappy salary I earned, it was still more money than I had ever made before, and I took it because I had never done a series regular role on TV. It was a chance to work with Steven Bochco—and Paris Barclay who was the new hotshot Black director.
I stayed in the Oakwood Apartments in Marina Del Rey for a month because it was close to the Culver Studios where we shot. I had to move out of there because I couldn’t afford it and my credit was crap. I had defaulted on my student loans when I first got out of school and tried to catch up but my credit score was not moving. I had my first credit card but it was one of those cards that worked like a debit card and my credit limit was the money I had put into the account. I couldn’t lease a car or sign for an apartment. I finally got my sister to cosign for a cheaper apartment on Vermont Avenue. It was an Oakwood Apartment but only $1,500 a month. My friend Patrice helped me find it.
I called her crying one day because I finally got tired of having it hard. I got tired of walking and taking buses and the loneliness and nomadic lifestyle. I just wanted to find home. Not find a home but find home. A safe place sanctuary that was peaceful, nurturing, reliable . . . and filled with love. I had gone from running from bullies, poverty, acting student, pounding the pavement, getting theater/film work to LA. I was ready to arrive at some destination.
