Viola Davis on Playing Michelle Obama, and Finding Her Voice as an Actor

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2022

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis traces her career in Hollywood back to a single moment of inspiration from her childhood: watching Cicely Tyson star in the 1974 movie “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.” “I saw excellence and craft, and I saw transformation,” Davis tells David Remnick. “And more importantly, what it planted in me is that seed of—literally—I am not defined by the boundaries of my life.” In a new memoir, “Finding Me,” Davis writes of a difficult upbringing in Rhode Island, marked by poverty and an abusive father. She pursued her dream of attending the prestigious Juilliard School, but felt alienated by a white-focussed approach that left little room for her background or identity. She talks with Remnick about how she grew past these early challenges, the lingering impostor syndrome that many successful people experience, and how she prepared to play Michelle Obama in the series “The First Lady.” Plus, the cartoonist Liana Finck, a regular presence in The New Yorker, explains how a ride on the Long Island Rail Road gets her creative ideas flowing; she can work among people without anyone talking to her.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:08.8	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:12.8	Viola Davis was already an accomplished stage actress when she appeared in the film Doubt in 2008.
0:19.4	It was a breakthrough performance for her. She played the mother
0:22.2	of a boy at a Catholic school. He's the school's only black student, and he might have been getting
0:27.2	much too much attention from a priest. In one scene, she confronts the principal, a nun played by
0:33.3	Merrill Streep. As the critic Roger Ebert put it, Davis goes face to face with the preeminent film
0:39.3	actress of this generation, and it's a confrontation of two equals that generates terrifying power.
0:46.0	I believe this man is creating or may have already brought about an improper relationship with your son.
0:55.0	I don't know.
0:56.0	I know. I am right.
0:58.0	Well, you gotta know something like that for sure when you don't.
1:01.0	What kind of mother are you?
1:09.0	Excuse me, but you don't know enough about life to say a thing like that, sister. I know enough. You know the rules maybe, but that don't cover it. I know what I won't accept. You accept what you got to accept and you work with it. This man is in my school. Well, he's got to be somewhere, maybe he's doing some good, too. He is after the boy. Maybe some of them boys want to get caught.
1:29.8	Davis has a kind of gravitas,
1:32.7	an immense presence that's always marked her performances,
1:36.9	and now she's playing Michelle Obama in the series The First Lady.
1:39.8	It looks at the lives in the White House of Obama,
1:42.1	Betty Ford, and Eleanor Roosevelt.
1:45.6	This week, Viola Davis's memoir comes out and it's called Finding Me. So I can't help but ask you this. You get a call from your agent and says,
1:54.0	Viola, we've got an offer for you to play Michelle Obama. What runs through your mind when you hear
1:59.6	that? Do you run for the hills?
	...

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