Viola Davis

first episode of many questions. Growing up, my family always had the radio want I loved the ritual of listening to shows like Desert Island Discs on a Sunday morning and hearing interesting people answer the same set of questions. Later, whenever I got my copy of Vanity fairback when you actually bought hard copies of magazines, I would always turn to the back page each first and read their version of Proust's questionnaire. I think it's the scientific method, really.

In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make interesting observations about the way we're the same and different. I love this discipline, and it made me wonder, what if these questions were just the jumping off point what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters with thought leaders and trailblazers across

all these different disciplines. I think of this show as a mini archive no pun intended, although it's sort of unavoidable, where I invite you to observe how these trailblazers overlap and also where they don't. So I took the format of Pruf's questionnaire and adapted what I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone They are When and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real

or fictionalized, defines love for you? What quest in which you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster? And I've gathered a group of remarkable people that I am honored and humbled to have had the chance to engage with. You may not hear their answers to all seven of these questions.

We've selected the ones that felt closest to their experience or were the most surprising or the ones that provided the most fertile ground to connect. And we're starting with Viola Davis, who, to me is one of the most passionate, thoughtful, and compelling actors I've ever watched on screen. She's one Tony's, Emmy's and Oscars, but sincerely all that hardware aside. She is an extremely interesting person with a generosity of spirit that makes me feel a bit star struck and frankly

a bit tongue tied. I don't think that's a bad thing, though it is humbling being around people you don't know very well but admire greatly. I am thrilled I get to talk to Viola today. It's really hard being an actor and interviewing you, because all I really want to be doing is like sitting in an empty theater asking you questions and then getting to go and sort of do scenes and like, welcome stuff. I've watched your movie, your your most recent beautiful, My Rainey's Black Bottom twice now,

and I don't know where to start. I don't know where to start about you, and I don't know where to start about Chadwick Boseman. And that's not even talking about the supporting character who are all in their own movies that are exquisite as well. I'm telling you, I'm going to get my baseball back and I'll come and start swinging it around. If you don't really ask her, I'm good either way. I'm not going to interview you because you've done have plenty of that. I'm going to

stick to these questions. First question, what relationship, real or fictionalized, defined love for you? Now, Lord of Mercy, Oh, I know shadow Lands, that film is about redemption and the idea that love it's not the absence of pain, and we're so we're so conditioned to believe that that it's supposed to be the absence of pain, that it's meant to be joy and happiness, and this it redeems love, redeems it does redeem, and it's not based in mystery.

A friend of mine at her wedding, she said something absolutely beautiful with her vows. She told her husband. Then she said, I promised to love you exactly as God made you. And I think that that's powerful. I mean, I watched my mom sit by my dad's David when he was dying of pancreatic cancer, and he would he would just scream her name every two seconds, may Alice, malice, malice, and she would say damn, damn, I'm right here, and he say oh oh, and then she would hold him.

And for me that that's it. You know, I've been with my husband twenty one years and all those things that probably are not in the sexy romantic comedies are all the things that I value. Someone who's gonna be there when you're sick, someone who literally, you know it's gonna hold your hand when you're going, someone who, like I said, just simply loves you. I mean, my mom and dad were together for forty eight years, and at the end of his life it became about her telling

him to go. And there is something m for me in terms of the kind of love I have now for my husband. It's not about concealer and tight abs, and you deserve it. What question would you most like answered? Oh, man, I'll tell you that right now. Why are we so cruel to each other? Ah? Please answer that question to me? Why are we so vicious? If you were to ask anyone what's the most vicious animal in the world, I mean, they probably would say the black mamba or you know,

a female lion. I mean, I don't know, but the two legged variety, the depth to which we are cruel. And here's the thing, the thing that is really really really interesting is we're cruel and we know how hard life is. We know the road, and even after knowing the road, we go back, and the level of judgment, how we sort of don't protect each other, how we think that killing someone will make us feel better. I mean,

I don't know. There's no measure of cruelty, men towards women, black towards white, and I think there's a human answer to it. I genuinely don't. The closest I ever came to understanding it was this extraordinary geneticist called Lord Michael Winstone, who was part of the team who isolated the genome initially. And we were saying backstage going on a English talk show. It was years ago, the Iraq War was happening, and I was talking about just the share loss of innocent life.

And he said, he's a Christian, a devout Christian, and he is also you know, this extraordinary scientist. And he said, I've always felt the nexus of my spirituality and science comes in truly understanding that you in the universe energetically, scientifically, you literally cannot have one without the other. Each thing has its counterpart. It has to night and day, good and evil. And he said, however simplistic it sounds, it is part of this, this order. We experience it so harshly.

We also experienced joy so profoundly as human beings, but are cruelty to each other. I don't. I don't think we can understand it or measure it in human terms, because I think it's it's an energetic it's sort of energy that was set in motion by God, source energy, whatever you want to call it, and and so it is, and so there are always two halves to everything. I mean, that's the only way I could ever. That was the closest I got my head to getting around it. Being

a theater geek. I remember the one thing I was taught that stayed in my it was the divine rights of kings, the hierarchy to which people feel like they're born. And the whole idea is to be in a position in terms of status as high as possible, because then the only one you're answering to is God. You're basically dancing with with God and everyone else is beneath you. When man makes sense of their own existence, there is

something about status. I always say. The bumper sticker in the eighties it was on the back of everyone's car that said, he who dies with the most toys wins. So is the ego? Is that? What is that? What it is? Ego? It's I don't know who I am unless I have my foot on someone else's neck. Status is your social standing above another person that gives you meaning and value. It's powerful. It's a cast system. M But I agree with you. I think it defies understanding.

I always say, I wonder what the caveman thought. That caveman who didn't have a computer, couldn't speak, didn't have any clothes. He's standing there, he's looking at the ocean, he's looking at the sky. What is he thinking? How is he making thinking about food or sex or where he's going to sleep, or how fast you can run away from the sabots? How I got that's what he's thinking. That's it total instinct. Where and when in your life were you happiest? You know what I'm going to have

to say. At When I went to Africa for the first time, I went to the Gambia, West Africa for two weeks and I was at Williard. Juilliard gave me a scholarship dollars because I guilted them into it. It's very eurocentric training at Juilliard, and I said, it was suppressing me so much. It was tethering me so much that I no longer knew what my voice was. I sort of had lost my identity in trying to make me and my blackness disappear in George Bernard Shaw and

Stringberg and check Off and Shakespeare. I just didn't know what kind of artists I was supposed to be if I couldn't use myself and my voice. So they gave me a scholarship and I went to Africa when I was twenty five to study the dance and music folklore four different tribes. And it changed my life. It just changed my life. And maybe it was because also I had broken up with a boyfriend right before and and so I was stated, you know, oh my god, it

was like a Greek tragedy. You know. I look back on that now and said, by, oh, why don't you just go to McDonald's or something, or just have a drink. No, go to Gambia. Yeah, no, I got to Gambia. I'm gonna geographical. I got at this heartbreak. I went to the Gambia and it was transformational, like that radical shifting that takes place in your life that just takes you by surprise, because it's the power of myth and rituals

that worked for me. It was the getting in the car every single day and singing their songs and the dances and the rituals that were about finding one's value or becoming a woman or a baby surviving after seven days. When I saw those Kenylla women and the Mandinka tribe in Africa, they were infertile women, women who could not have children, and they dressed as clowns, oversized clothes and makeup on their faces, and they went into these compounds screaming,

shouting with the jim Bay drums. Everybody would scream and shout with them, dozens of people, like a mob scene. And then they passed a calabash around with food and then they sang this song and it translates to I did not come here for food. My stomach is full. I did not come here for food. I came for much more. And the whole ritual was about parting the clouds of heaven, making so much noise that God would hear the deepest pain of not being able to have

a child and somehow poured down the blessing. It's like those types of rituals that I took part in that made me believe that there was something in the abstract world that I could I don't know that I could cling to to find in myself. I'm extremely moved by that amazing image, and I wish that we had more ritual around the hard things in the West, the way that we live around death, around infertility, around loss, around

getting old. Did you feel that the ritual itself or the community performing the ritual created the scaffold upon which you could actually have something to tell yourself to that when you came back you would still be connected. I love that question. I know exactly what you're saying, and I think that's a great question. It was more of the community and the connection. It was more of being seen.

I mean, m a dark skinned woman. From the moment you come out of the womb and you step forth into the world, you get all the values associated with being dark skin and then being at Juilliard with a deep voice, dark skinned, wide, no big lips. It's like you're basically nothing. The invisibility. So a notion of invisibility. Yes, okay, it's so fascinating because I can only empathize with a feeling of growing up invisible and then going to a place.

And what you just said of what a community does is a community sees they see the howling sadness of these women, and they wrap around it and honor it, literally to make God listen. So you becoming an actor and the bizarre oxymoron of the invisibility that there is supposed to be you know that was saying, Oh she disappeared into a role. Oh he really disappeared into the character.

It was extraordinary. There must be a very particular attention for you with that idea of what is it to disappear into a character or is it rather to know yourself, to see yourself and to gather them into what you already are? But you you've got to know what that is in the first place. You do have to know

what that is in the first place. I don't know if I did not know that, or if I just didn't trust it at the time, if I just didn't value it at the time, because as you move through life, people tell you who you should be or who you should not be, and that's what was happening. I don't mean the blast Juilliard at all. I compared to Musin X. Like I said, Musin X tastes bad, but it works. The permission, that's what I want to say. Permission. That's

what I got when I was in Africa. It was literally a weekend to that trip that I sat down at one point and it was the one time in my life that I had absolutely no anxiety, like none, like floating on air. So I think that what I was looking for was permission that God made me right because I didn't have that permission throughout my entire childhood

and throughout Juilliard. And that's really overly simplifying it. It's like Renee Brown says, when you start with the foundation of worth and value, then you can live better when you start with that foundation. When you came back and you're back into the check off from the Stromberg, you're taking a look at Masha, did you feel that the distance had been lessened or do you always feel that there is a scrim in between the plethora of white playwrights and you as a black woman. Yes, I did.

I did. I didn't feel like I was being whipped for doing everything wrong. But it was only until maybe twentysomething years later that I can literally sit here with you and say that I reject act everything that I've been taught. I reject people telling me that I'm not smart if I don't read the classics? So does Tony Morrison? Does that qualify as a classic? What does that mean? Who wrote those rules? Who told me that I wasn't beautiful?

Who told me that if I did not fit into any character in George Bernard Shaw, then somehow I'm really crappy at what I do. What if George Bernard Shaw doesn't speak to me? What if he doesn't does that make me what? I think that the keepers of the structure of the way things should be have been extraordinarily flawed.

I'm coming from a country that's built on a science, basically a bunk science to explain why I, as a black woman, is less than science is a beauty sciences of intelligent science of sexuality that told us that you're never gonna be as pretty, your brains are smaller, So You're never gonna be as smart. Black women could take as much pain as possible because you don't feel any pain. You're strong, you're almost masculine. You could cut them open

without any anesthesia. You can rape them with impunity. That's where I'm coming from. So now at fifty five, I could say the foundation in which you explained my existence and who I am, I rejected the fact that you are telling the stories that you tell now, given that you felt voiceless and invisible, is truly inspiring. M What is the quot to see you like least about yourself? The quality about myself that I like the least is

my esteem issues. Although I will say that I am a lot better than I was like by nine something present, but I don't even like feeling one vestige of it where all of a sudden you're in a situation and then you're right back to where you've started. And if I were to track any situation that brings that out of me, that feeling of not feeling worthy, it's when people try to attack my worth. It could be anything. It could be the mommy skills, it could be anything

with acting, with your work, with your skill set. As soon as I feel like I'm under attack. I feel it, it costs me something. Do you have any ritual to heal that in those moments? Well, there's two things that I do. I'm a believer in connection and finding people in your life that love you. You know, a therapist told me that once find someone who loves you, Viola, that roots for you, just sweats for you, just has

your back. I mean, I grew up in really abject poverty and people always ask me, how did you get from that to this? And I always say, those supernatural allies, those people who come out of nowhere, who say, let me tell you, this is what you have to do. Okay, let's suit up and me and you will fight this battle together. Okay. But they're supernatural, which means that you know, they come out of nowhere and they're not always the

people that you think they're going to be. But the other thing that I do, and it's really working for me, I go to Viola, the little girl, the eight year old. I literally talked to her, and I'm not kidding you. At first, I would always try to heal her because I said, you grew up with an alcoholic father and abuse. So I'm gonna heal this little girl, you know, who was always fighting, rough and tumble little girl, and then

someone made me realize that she was a survivor. You have to allow her to be excited at the year old she's gonna become. Usually gotta let her squeal in delight. And so now I'm just gonna say this. If it were up to me, I would put all the trophies in a box in a garage. I don't like watching myself. I have a tendency to not celebrate my victories. I have its tendency to some time aims just sort of twisted and turning around actually and almost let it destroy me.

Sometimes it's a weird dichotomy there when I tap into that eight year old girl and say, Viola, guess what we're gonna eat some French fries today? We are Viola, guess what We're gonna get dressed up today in acute dress. I hate getting dressed up because I hate heels. We're gonna dress up today in some heels and we're gonna go to an awards show. Oh my god. Then I have an appreciation for my life that is the equivalent of a child's joy. That's helping me a lot. It's

helped me sleep at night. It helps me enjoy every single moment. What person, place, or experience most alter to you in life. My dad dying was a big one. That's a hard one because I was there. I wish I were more brave during that time in what way. It was after he died that I went on the hospice page and they had a whole section that talked about how to help someone die. That they will have dementia and they will see people that had passed before them.

They would literally call out their names, and you have to validate them. You can't just say it's delusional, because what that is is once again it's the word permission. They're asking for permission to cross over. I didn't want to look at that. They just want you to hold their hand. I didn't want to look at that. They just want their lips to stay moist. I want to know that no one tells you about death, No one

talks about it. So to literally see a parent take the last breath and they have to sit there and go, Daddy, it's okay to go. And then at his funeral, I remember when we closed the casket and my nieces and nephews had all these pictures they put in the casket with him. Was beautiful. And I looked in the casket and he didn't have any shoes on, and I was pissed. I was like, we paid you all this money in my brain because I was about to custom out, and

you didn't put any shoes on. My daddy looks greatly. He didn't put shoes, and the next thought was he didn't need shoes. That encapsulates life. It does, don't care what anyone says it does. After he died, you're not thinking about how he pissed you off. You're not thinking about that he was an alcoholic. You're just thinking about the fact that I loved him. He was my father and he's gone. And then you're thinking about forgiveness. You're

thinking about mercy. You think about all those things that nobody teaches you about in life. There's no other way to measure life. It whittles life down to absolutely the essentials of really what makes a life and what makes joy. I would say that would be it. It It leveled me. Do you find that after these big moments in your life, you can take them with you into the evolution of who you are after them. Are you aware of practicing

those things that you've observed? Yeah, I do, But then I have to move through life and someone comes along and knocks my ass down. Yeah knowing now, I mean it's a war of attrition a lot of the time. Yeah, absolutely, it's it's difficult, but I do, and I'll tell you when I do. People notice when I came back from Africa, everyone noticed the ship it so I know I bring it back. But then I got to navigate through life.

You know what my dad used to say, He said, I don't know why you keep aiming for of everything, he said, this is the biggest miss name where we should be aiming for, like like fifty eight percent. If that's let that be your because it's never you're always going to be disappointed. You're never going to get it right. And he was like, it doesn't have lower standards. It's just appreciate that there is a certain percentage of life that is mostly circumstance or lock or whatever you want

to call it. This is not going to go your way, and in order to not be buffeted by that, constantly sort of hold true to the smaller amount that you are sure of oh yeah, oh, and where I began. It is a rare privilege talking to you, It really is. Um. I feel like I learned something every time I hear you interviewed, but even also when I watch you work and like as an actor, that's amazing. It's back at

your girl. I appreciate you, and I appreciate your time honestly, all my love and thanks to you, Oh love, back to you. Please watch Viola's extraordinary performance in mar Rainey's Black Bottom, but also go back and find that scene in the movie Doubt where she and Meryl Streep go head to head by the basketball court. It is an acting masterclass. Many Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research

assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me and man gesh Hetty God Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison O Day, Lisa Castella and Annick Oppenheim at w kPr, de La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited Tex support Henry driver,