Viola Davis trained at one of the most prestigious art schools in the country: Juilliard.
But it was difficult for her to reconcile the white acting standards she was taught to uphold while being a Black actress. The EGOT winner recently chatted with Sam Fragoo on his Talk Easy podcast, where the host asked if Julliard was "shaping you into a good actress or a perfect white actress?"
"Definitely a perfect white actress," Davis said. "What it looks like...it's technical training in order to deal with the classics—the Strindbergs, and the O'Neills, and the Chekhovs, and the Shakespeares. I totally understand that. … But what it denies is the human being behind all of that."
"I feel that as a Black actress, I'm always being tasked to show that I have range, by doing white work. So, if I can master Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire—I can do the best I can with Tennessee Williams, but he writes for fragile, white women," she added. "Beautiful work, but it's not me."
Davis explained that such “parameters” were placed on her and not her classmates—and she was never taught classics by Black writers.
"So for those four years at Juilliard, all those white actors have to do is play all white characters. That's not me," she said. "Me, I'm tasked to only do the classics, and no Black writer is included in those classics."
Davis added that when she left Julliard, her performances shifted "Most of what I'll be asked to do are Black characters, which people will not feel I am Black enough," she said. "So then I'm caught in a quagmire, this sort of in between place, of sort of not understanding how to use myself as the canvas."
Davis ultimately described Juilliard as “an out-of-body experience.” She continued, “Once again, I did not think that I could use me. Me needed to be left at the front door, even though me was what got me in there."
Davis graduated from the New York City conservatory in 1993 and landed her first Broadway role in 1996, playing Vera in Seven Guitars. The performance earned her a Tony Award nomination. In the years since, she’s taken on roles like Nanisca in The Woman King, Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder, and Rose Maxson in Fences.