Actors On Actors: Viola Davis & Jennifer Lawrence
Variety hosted another of their “Actors On Actors” segment, this time featuring Viola Davis (The Woman King) and Jennifer Lawrence (Causeway). Together, the two actresses talk about the stress of acting as they get older, the messy and fulfilling lifestyle of being mothers, and how the media has misconstrued press appearances such as Lawrence's New York Times interview.
“To be perfectly honest, what I have going for me is that I’m a Black actress. I understand how people perceive that. People talk about race…They don’t necessarily talk about it, but when they do, they talk about race not in perspective or the extent to which it can be a hindrance. I don’t see it as a hindrance.”
The actresses start their conversation with Jennifer asking Viola how actress and writer Maria Bello pitched The Woman King. Viola says Maria Bello pitched the idea when she presented Viola with an award at the Skirball Cultural Center. Instead of introducing or presenting the award traditionally, Bello pitched the movie to the audience at the ceremony, asking them if they wanted to see Viola in The Woman King. Despite receiving cheers from the audience, Viola thought the film would never happen. Viola contemplated if there has ever been a film like The Woman King with a lead looking like her and wondered how a studio would be convinced that a Black woman could lead a global box office and put money behind it. In short, Viola didn’t believe the film would happen because such a project wasn't possible due to her previously stated reasons and her age being a hindrance in preparing for her role.
Viola confesses that, in a way, she sees Jennifer as the same type of actress as her—an actress that brings life to her performances. Viola feels that actors should be able to capture the joy of life, the tragedy of it, the paradox, and the contradiction of life in every moment. While admitting that there is a technical proficiency aspect of acting, Viola claims to see life in Jennifer’s portrayals. This inclusion of life in performances is why, in Viola’s opinion, people come to see Jennifer on screen.
Jennifer circles the conversation back to Viola being the lead in The Woman King. She recalls her time filming The Hunger Games film franchise and notes that before it, nobody hardly ever put a woman in the lead of an action movie because it was believed to not work in the industry. This belief was based on a notion that girls and boys can identify with a male lead, but boys are unable to identify with a female lead. Jennifer is happy to see films come out and blow through those beliefs, proving that they are lies to keep certain people out of the movies and remain in the same position they have always been in. Jennifer sees The Woman King as one such film and praises Viola for her performance in action scenes.
“I feel like every role and every project is a challenge because what you have to do is create a human being. And thinking, ‘are you brave enough to do that?’”
Focusing on Viola’s career, Jennifer asks if Viola ever had a costar that challenged her more than any other. In response, Viola states her belief that every costar she has worked with challenged her. What she feels has been the most challenging is the last three years. During those troubling years, Viola saw every type of life and witnessed the fall of many, not just from COVID-19, but also from numerous events in her daily life. She praises The Actors Studio for advising her and other performers to observe life, not other actors. With every role you have, Viola feels the challenge is to figure out how to get at the truth. Once someone decides to take that journey, they must consider if they are brave enough to follow through. This pursuit of truth creates performers that audiences view as transformative and having artistic merit.
After working on The Woman King, Viola feels that the word “action” in action movies gives audiences and creators the notion that the film goes down a peg in artistic merit. This is far from true based on her experiences. In preparation for her role as Nanisca in The Woman King, Viola did weight training five hours a day, six days a week for three months, and trained on the terrain of African jungles for five months. She is disappointed that despite all that work, those efforts are seen as a commercial for an action movie. Artistic merit is the work and dedication put in a project, not something based on genre.
Wanting to know more about Jennifer, Viola asks how she feels when doing the big tent pole movies and what stands in her way from creating her character in those types of movies. Jennifer reveals her approach to creating her character and managing the pressure she feels from being a part of big-budget projects is not letting the feeling seep through. She notes that when she worked on movies for Marvel under the X-Men franchise, she found it hard to prevent having a weighted perception of the movie and performances due to the big name behind it. When an actor gets to the point where they feel ridiculous or improper in their performance, there is nowhere else to go.
“When I first started out, I was fearless too, or at least I felt like I had talent. Then you go out there and it’s almost like the more you know, the wiser you get and the more fear you feel because you know the possibilities.”
Hunger Games was an enormous responsibility for Jennifer because she understood the popularity of the books and that the audience were youths who look up to her character Katniss Everdeen. There were many different opinions on who Katniss is and how this action hero would look. The biggest conversation Jennifer remembers was about losing weight for her portrayal. Along with being young and unable to be on a diet at the time, she also didn’t want the thought of girls not feeling able to dress up as Katniss due to weight seep in.
Remembering that Viola has also worked with The Hunger Games film director Francis Lawrence, Jennifer asks how she found the experience. Vola found working with Francis an amazing encounter and praised his work and techniques as beautiful and elegant. Jennifer agrees and recounts when she once asked Francis about his notes. Francis told her he went to acting classes when he wanted to be a director because he knew nothing about acting. His purpose for attending was to learn how to talk with actors and understand their nuances.
Jennifer admits to being cocky and sure of herself when she was younger. However, as she grew older, she realized she was becoming more scared and scrutinized herself more often. Both Jennifer and Viola agree that after reaching success, they developed a wariness of falling from a higher level of expectations. Viola remarks that she has come to a point where she has seen family pass and people on their deathbeds. Being at an age close to 60, Viola has seen horrific things that made her see life differently. To her, life has become clearer, and when getting to her age, people understand what the stakes are every time they go into something. What has also changed for Viola is how she perceives success. At first, she was satisfied with just one day of work on something. Now, a different narrative has been injected into her. Thoughts of awards season, being a part of the conversation, and concerns of failure become more frequent and increase her anxiety.
“Julliard was about voice; it was about speech because it was about giving you all the building blocks to transform. Transform for classical and contemporary work. The only problem with that is…You wanna be moved. You want a human experience; you want to feel less alone. They don’t get it at that [Julliard].”
During the interview, Jennifer becomes curious about Viola’s experience studying at Julliard and asks her it. Viola relates her time at Julliard to Mucinex—it’s a medicine that’s hard to go down, but you’re happy that it works. She claims that with Julliard, acting was solely about technical proficiency. Viola admits that technical proficiency is useful, but when the craft gets to the point where that is the only focus, actors leave their souls behind and are no longer artists. On top of that, Julliard is also focused on Eurocentric training. There is a clear idea of what the characters look like and react when studying the classics. However, Viola states that is not who she is. She wonders if everything learned at Julliard should be followed, and if so, what will she do about her “Blackness?” What is she going to do with her deep voice and wide nose? Viola feels that she needs to believe that she is a canvas on which she starts her work.
Viola ultimately believes that acting is both the business and the work. Most people don’t understand what actors do, sometimes not even the actors themselves. When receiving a role, Viola reasons that many actors go to lose weight, visit nail salons, change their hair, and make other changes because they feel like the part is a look that constitutes doing everything needed to maintain it. The business aspect of what actors do is the image they emit. The image is comprehensive answers to questions like: how much you make at the box office; did you make enough to satisfy the investment and the P&A; is the audience going to love It or hate it; do you have the appeal to the target demographic; how much did you get paid as opposed to how much someone else got paid; etc. The work is when an actor gets on set. It’s about the process of figuring out how to make the character work and having the tools to be able to do that.
Viola then asks Jennifer about how much of the business side of acting has infiltrated her love of the craft. Jennifer feels she was at the height of her career eight years ago when The Hunger Games films were released. At the end of the franchise, she believed she could no longer be an observer of life because everyone was observing her. This feeling of no longer being an observer caused, in her opinion, her craft to suffer and her attention to the business side of acting to falter. Jennifer didn’t know how to resolve these issues and tried to counteract them by taking roles in various movies. She soon realized she shouldn’t sign on to any films until something truly spoke to her as an actress.
This realization led to her taking a few years off acting until she read the script for Causeway. By this point in her life, Jennifer had little confidence in herself, feeling she had lost what felt instinctual to her as an actress. Reading Causeway was the first time since her stint in The Hunger Games when she started to feel like she got her voice back. Once on set, Jennifer became very hands-on in the filming and writing. She notes that her readiness was dependent on the nature of the project and the wishes of the director. Jennifer believes her role as an actor and producer changes movie to movie the same way she adjusts her role alongside certain costars.
“I have to say that the business is probably one of the biggest sort of offenders of my love on the work because I don’t feel like I fit into the business…I don’t have any of those things that you can trade in for success.”
Continuing the discussion about the business and work behind acting, Viola believes acting involves incredible bravery. She uses a prostitute as an example. Viola feels that many images of the people actors portray on screen are mythologized because audiences can’t handle the truth of who they are. The woman prostitute is a fitting example because she embodies a sort of bastion of male desirability. Viola reasons that by the time a woman makes the decision to become a prostitute, a lot of heartbreaking things have transpired in the woman’s life. Not many are willing to explore that woman to get to the truth of who she is. Viola uses this as an example of many people she felt she betrayed in her portrayals. She believes it to her duty to honor the person that is her character.
Viola supposes that the desire to honor a role in all its ugliness and putridness comes into conflict with honoring the business. When conflicting beliefs come into the fold, negotiations about the truth of the human behind the character occurs. She feels when more concessions are made, the more likely it is to create a business of images that move further away from giving audiences the truth of the character. For Viola, actors need to ask themselves if they are doing what they believe to be doing as artists or servicing a larger idea of what they should be doing. She admits that while there are movies meant for escapism, a significant part of what actors do is not about escapism.
Viola then asks Jennifer what the biggest hindrance to her craft is. Before answering, Jennifer goes back to Viola’s claims of not being beautiful while being told by others what beauty is. She confidently affirms Viola of her beauty. Returning to the question, Jennifer reveals that the biggest hindrance she experiences is the press. Every time she does an interview, Jennifer becomes afraid of falling back into what caused her craft to suffer. Troubling thoughts like wondering how the interview went, what will be taken from the interview, what will be in context, and worrying about her articulation come to the forefront. Jennifer admits to being very self-conscious about her intellect because she didn’t finish middle school.
Overall, Jennifer feels that interviews are antithetical to what she does. She doesn’t want anybody to know or think they know what she is like at home and in real life. Jennifer sees herself as a mirror and a vessel of many different things, not something remembered from little things in civilian life. Jennifer believes she loses a lot of control over her craft every time she must do press for a movie. This was especially true for Causeway because it felt personal. Sitting down and convincing people to see her films feels wrong to her.
“I always tell my daughter that there’s a place so deep inside you that is untouched by the world; untouched by even the people in your life who love you the most. And it’s just yours. It’s your lifeforce, it’s your truth, and it is your job from the moment you come out of the womb to the moment you leave this Earth to honor that in everything you do.”
Viola empathizes with Jennifer’s difficulties with the press. She admits that staying true to yourself is a hard-won battle. In her life, Viola has found it challenging to walk in spaces to make herself known and seen because she is afraid of people shaming her. This fear is present when conducting interviews. When Jennifer asks Viola what it’s like to have a daughter, Viola divulges how having a child becomes a sensitive subject for parents. She explains that as a parent helps their child and give it the tools to grow, the parent is also growing. Raising a child leads to the healing your own inner child.
Viola states her appreciation of Jennifer’s affirmation of her beauty. When talking about her beauty, Viola explains it from an observational standpoint, stating, “I’m a dark-skinned 57-year-old woman.” Despite being happily married for the past 23 years and blessed with a beautiful family, Viola admits that trauma runs deep. She wishes this wasn’t true and was confident in her appearance, but claims trauma sneaks up on everyone. Viola recalls a question a therapist asked her years ago that stick with her to this day. She asked Viola, “if none of the things you don’t like about yourself change, would you still be happy?” It took Viola many years to answer that question, and the answer was a resounding yes. Imperfections are what make a human special. She quotes American professor Brene Brown, who said, “you’re imperfect, but you are wired for struggle, and you’re worthy of love and belonging.” While she may struggle with the notion of beauty, Viola knows that uncertainty is part of what makes her who she is.
“What we do as actors helps people feel less alone.”
Curious about Causeway, Viola asks Jennifer what drew her to the story and what made her feel connected to her character Lynsey. When she read Causeway, Jennifer related to Lynsey’s complicated relationship with home, carrying an invisible injury, and knowing that the healing is not linear. In retrospect, Jennifer believes working through childhood trauma and living with it as an adult is not about being able to get rid of it but learning to live with it. Jennifer admits to having a beautiful childhood with loving parents who did everything they could for her. Despite the different circumstances between Jennifer and Lynsey, Jennifer conveys that being able to lay out the character and add some things allowed her to empathize with Lynsey. By feeling empathy for her role, Jennifer believes she can understand how to feel empathy for herself. Filming Causeway was a healing process for Jennifer, making it feel personal enough to seem awkward to talk about it.
In response, Viola states acting is supposed to be personal, and it’s an actor's job to help make the audience feel less alone. She believes that we’re living in a world where we are so distracted from ourselves that we can’t connect with other people. Viola reasons this is all due to everyone perpetuating fraud. Nobody is coming to the table with their truth to arrive at a space to connect with others—no one wants to reveal their issues for fear of rejection. Everyone wants perfectionism to the extent that even perfection makes an individual disillusioned with how messy things can get in life. Viola feels that actors are human whisperers. The braver actors are in telling the truth the more people come to see their character because the audiences then feel part of the collaboration. When audiences see a movie, they catch a glimpse of understanding life and themselves.
In Viola's opinion, the problem with box office attendance these days is that people are coming while wanting to be prettier, smarter, and funnier than they are now. This is because actors sometimes give audiences this image to appease commerciality. As a result, actors forget what is important in their life and craft. The interview ends with Viola and Jennifer thanking each other for their time, honesty, and belief in one another. They both hug before departing.