Viola Davis and Stacey Abrams talk power, independence and representation in Hollywood for Variety

A-list actress Viola Davis and political power-player Stacey Abrams are both titans in their own fields.

And the pair of high-profile women talked about their responsibility to fight for a better world while in conversation for Variety’s Black Women Of Awards Season issue.

During the chat Viola, 55, explained how her awards season clout is just another avenue for advocacy, telling Stacey, 47: ‘It’s a platform. It’s another microphone. It’s another opportunity to open my mouth and speak a really fundamental truth about Hollywood and this business and, really, America.’

Viola, who has an Oscar for her role in 2016’s Fences, is earning rave reviews for her role in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, an adaptation of the August Wilson play of the same name.

‘It was interesting to play a woman who has that inside of her, but that other part that says, “You may not see me, but I see me,”‘ Davis told Abrams of her character, a revered blues singer from the 1920s.  

‘…It was a joy to play someone who was that emotionally free and Black,’ the How To Get Away With Murder star said of the role. 

‘With Ma, she had the freedom of being absolutely who she was because she gave herself permission. I wanted to honor her. I want to honor all the Black people that I portray.’

But to play complex characters like Ma, Viola had to forge her own path.

‘I took the reins out of necessity,’ she told Stacey of her career. ‘There aren’t movies that are being done and developed with anyone like me in mind.  

‘I’m a 55-year-old dark-skinned woman in Hollywood. I’m still in the “maid,” the “urban mother crying over her dead son’s body in the middle of the road” category. I’m not seen as sexual. 

‘The most basic fundamentals of what makes a woman do not trickle down to me. For me to get those roles and be seen in that way, I had to create and develop them myself.’ 

Stacey’s political career took her down a similar route, as she told Viola: ‘I think that one of the reasons you and your characters resonate with me so much is that you seem so intentional about how you are going to reconcile your space and how you’re going to enter this world.’

Now, Abrams is also looking towards her own awards season success, with her documentary All In: The Fight For Democracy already pegged as a contender in the Oscar’s Best Documentary Feature category.

‘It’s an extraordinary thing to know that the intent of the film has been recognized,’ she said of the project, which followed the story of her 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race against Republican Brian Kemp, a race which was plagued with allegations of voter suppression. 

Kemp ended up winning by fewer than 55,000 votes. While Abrams accepted the results of the election she made a point not to concede, telling Georgians ‘democracy failed’ them during a November 2018 speech.

Talking about All In, Stacey said: ‘The goal was to provide Americans with the tools they needed to identify and mitigate voter suppression and that constant attack on their citizenship.’

Among those tools: a desire for retribution.

‘Sometimes we need to vote out of revenge,’ Abrams, who founded the organization Fight Fair after her campaign to combat voter suppression, explained.

‘Your failure to do your job to serve me is cause enough for me to remove you from office. I think vengeance gets a bad rap. We see it as sort of evil. If you aren’t willing to do your job, you don’t deserve your job.’

Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom is available on Netflix now. All In can be streamed on Amazon Prime.