Not speaking out is unthinkable for Davis; her voice is her identity, her emancipation. It’s still daunting, though. “Should I say it? Should I not? What’s a good hashtag? Is there going to be some kind of silent backlash, where I just stop getting phone calls? Stop getting jobs?”
And, as if those questions aren’t formidable enough, here’s another: How could Davis ever address everything that demands addressing when racism in this country is both subtle and systemic? I’ve watched Davis do video interviews with white men (like Tom Hanks, in Variety’s Actors on Actors series) and Black women (like Oprah Winfrey, for OWN). The difference is remarkable. Of course Davis is a skilled code switcher. She’d have to be. But her openness in Winfrey’s presence is markedly different to the glassy, careful facade she maintains around Hanks, who—for whatever reason, and maybe it’s just excitement or inexperience as an interviewer—constantly interrupts her.
Davis brings up Vanity Fair’s own history of inclusiveness, or lack thereof—and fair enough. “They’ve had a problem in the past with putting Black women on the covers,” she says. “But that’s a lot of magazines, that’s a lot of beauty campaigns. There’s a real absence of dark-skinned Black women. When you couple that with what’s going on in our culture, and how they treat Black women, you have a double whammy. You are putting us in a complete cloak of invisibility.”
She agreed to star as Annalise in How to Get Away With Murder, as well as serve as a producer, to try to reshape and expand the Overton window for Black women—to make moral ambiguity, bisexuality, and wigless, makeup-free grief part of the conversation. This year, in the New York Times, filmmaker and journalist Kellee Terrell described Annalise as “a pop-culture revelation” and “one of the most complicated black women in television history.” Still, an earlier Times piece lingers like a toxic cloud. In 2014, critic Alessandra Stanley prompted a backlash with her review of the show, describing executive producer Shonda Rhimes as an “angry black woman” and proclaiming, jaw-droppingly, that Davis was “less classically beautiful than [Kerry] Washington.”
Davis isn’t furious about the Times piece, but neither will she dismiss it as a random or meaningless event. “Whatever her name is from the New York Times…just write a review!” She has to pause here, because I am laughing. “In not just writing a review, you have revealed your own underlying racism. All you see is a Black woman, that’s it. You don’t see a woman.”
Davis draws strength from both the Black women who made a path for her and the little girls, like her daughter, following in her footsteps. “We have survived a hellified history.”
“People share their stories with me a lot,” she continues. I nod to her over Zoom. Of course they do. “People hug me in grocery stores. Parking lots at Target.” Stores like Target and Vons, she adds, are her “happy place.” When I consider the little girl she once was, it makes sense. They’re pristine, fluorescent landscapes of the semi-affordable trappings of human dignity—a little grocery, a little fashion, a little décor.
As with many of us, the pandemic has given Davis a taste of a slower life. “I don’t put any limits on myself,” she says. “But I feel the disillusionment of being busy…. My work is not all of me.” She pauses, then adds with suppressed mirth: “I used to say when I was younger, Acting is not what I do, it’s who I am. I look back at myself like, what the hell were you talking about?” She laughs her bell-like laugh.
I think I understand. Acting helped her find her voice. But she has discovered that her worth transcends her talent.
“To the world she’s a warrior,” says Octavia Spencer. “To those of us who love her, she’s simply our sister.”
HAIR BY JAMIKA WILSON; MAKEUP BY AUTUMN MOULTRIE; MANICURE BY CHRISTINA AVILES AUDE; SET DESIGN BY LIZZIE LANG; ART DIRECTOR, NATALIE MATUTSCHOVKSY; PRODUCED ON LOCATION BY WESTY PRODUCTIONS; FOR DETAILS, GO TO VF.COM/CREDITS
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— The 10 Best Movies of 2020 (So Far)
— Review: Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods Is Gold
— The Wild Life and Many Loves of Ava Gardner
— Inside Pete Davidson and John Mulaney’s “Make-A-Wish” Friendship
— Now Streaming: Over 100 Years of Black Defiance at the Movies
— Is TV Sabotaging Itself With Shrinking Shows?
— From the Archive: Exposing MGM’s Smear Campaign Against Rape Survivor Patricia Douglas
Looking for more? Sign up for our daily Hollywood newsletter and never miss a story.