Viola Davis Admits She’s ‘Terrified’ To Learn What Michelle Obama Will Think Of Her ‘First Lady’ Performance

etcanada.com:

Viola Davis is playing Michelle Obama in the upcoming Showtime series “The First Lady”, but admits she’s “terrified” wondering what Obama will think of her performance.

Speaking with Vanity Fair at a Los Angeles event for the series premiere, the former “How to Get Away with Murder” star confessed that the role was one that filled her with trepidation. “I’ve had lots of ‘what was I thinking?’ moments by taking this part because of the enormity of it all,” Davis said. READ MORE: ‘The First Lady’: Viola Davis Embodies Michelle Obama In First Trailer “There’s a lot of fear that I messed up my portrayal of Michelle Obama,” Davis said. “She’s an icon.

Everyone knows what she looks like and what she sounds like, so I am absolutely terrified. But I’m mostly terrified about what she will think.

I don’t want to insult her and have her calling me. I gotta make the sister look good. I just hope that it lands with her.” According to Davis, she listened to Obamas podcasts “over a hundred times” and watched countless videos in order to capture the former First Lady’s mannerisms, and even spoke with Obama before production began. “She said to me, ‘I’m not an angry person,’” recalled Davis, who is both star and exec producer of “The First Lady”. “So what I really wanted to do with my performance was to protect her, to honour her, and not be the perception that Black women are angry and hostile,” Davis explained. READ MORE: Michelle Pfeiffer, Viola Davis & Gillian Anderson Talk Becoming ‘The First Lady’ “Michelle Obama was the first Black woman in the White House, and she was perceived to be angry, hostile, overly masculine, and not feminine enough.