Viola Davis stuns, photographer makes history


Illustration for article titled Viola Davis opens up about police brutality and regrets help with historic Vanity Fair Cover

Screenshot: Dario Calmese (Vanity Fair

Viola Davis radiates on the cover of the Vanity Fair for its July / August 2020 issue. The Oscar-winning, Emmy, and Tony-winning actress discusses protests of police brutality, the fight for equal pay as a black actor, and much more. Dario Calmese He shot the photos that accompany Davis’ performance and made history by doing so. He is the first black photographer in shoot a cover for Vanity Fair.

Davis, who turns 55 next month, has expressed the importance of equal pay for black actors, declaring famously (and excellently) during a Women in the World event in 2018 “People say: ‘You are a black woman Meryl Streep… .OK, so if there is no one like me, if you think I am that, you pay me what I’m worth. “She doubles that statement during her interview at Vanity Fair, adding that addressing every issue of systemic racism in this country would take forever.

Should I say it? Should not? What is a good hashtag? she says. “Will there be some kind of silent reaction, where you just stop receiving phone calls? Stop getting a job? It also points to Vanity Fair’s inclusion issues, with which writer Sonia Saraiya agrees. (“There is a real absence of dark-skinned black women. When you combine that with what is happening in our culture and how they treat black women, you have a double whammy. You are putting on a full invisibility cloak for us.” Davis Notes .)

Elsewhere in the conversation, Davis discusses wanting to be on the front line of the Black Lives Matter protests. but he recognizes his apprehensions with COVID-19. As we know, the disease comes with a higher mortality rate for african americans.

“This was our civil rights movement, and we were marginalized due to health problems,” she says of wanting to march with her close friend, Octavia Spencer. “We feel isolated from the movement.” However, they made sure to find a way to show their solidarity. They held a neighborhood demonstration “with friends and family who needed to take their health into account” in Studio City, California.

Davis also explains some of his regrets about being in the movie. Aid, which was her introduction to many despite being in the acting game for years. According to the actress, despite earning an Oscar nomination for her role as maid Aibileen, she wishes she hadn’t been in the movie.

“Not many narratives are invested in our humanity,” says Davis. “They are interested in the idea of ​​what it means to be black, but … it is serving the white audience … There is a part of me that feels that I betrayed myself and my people, because I was in a movie that I wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth]. “

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