Viola Davis Reveals a Director Called Her By His Maid’s Name, Speaks Out on Hollywood’s Slow Race Progress (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Zack Sharf Viola Davis joined Variety and Kering at the Cannes Film Festival for a powerful Women In Motion conversation in which she revealed a director once called her by his maid’s name.

The Oscar and Emmy-winning actor was talking about Hollywood’s perception of Black actors and how the amount of roles she can play remains limited due to her skin color, even at her A-list stature.“I had a director who did that to me.

He said, ‘Louise!’ I knew him for 10 years and he called me Louise and I find out that it’s because his maid’s name is Louise,” Davis said. “I was maybe around 30 at the time, so it was a while ago.

But what you have to realize is that those micro-aggressions happen all the time.” Davis won an Emmy for her leading role in “How to Get Away With Murder,” which was one of the only series fronted by a dark-skinned Black woman on television during its six-season run. “How to Get Away With Murder” from Shonda Rhimes broke down barriers for representation on network TV, but Davis admitted the show didn’t necessarily open the door for more TV opportunities for women who look like her.“I know that when I left ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ that I don’t see a lot of dark skin women in lead roles on TV and not even in streaming services,” Davis said, in conversation at Cannes with Variety‘s chief correspondent Elizabeth Wagmeister. “And that ties into ideology and ethos and mentality, and that’s speaking in the abstract.