Viola Davis reflected on how The Juilliard School shaped her as an actor, even as she navigated a space where whiteness was the unspoken standard.
In an April 27 interview on the podcast Talk Easy With Sam Fragoso, Davis discussed a range of topics, including the specific challenges Black actors face — and how she learned to pivot.
“At Juilliard, what was the objective of their training? Were they shaping you into a good actress or a perfect white actress?” Fragoso asked.
The EGOT winner, without missing a beat, said, “Definitely a perfect white actress” — a response that prompted Fragoso to ask what, exactly, that meant for her.
“What it looks like, it’s technical training in order to deal with the classics — in order to deal with the Strindbergs, and the O’Neills, and the Chekhovs, and the Shakespeares. I totally understand that, to get your voice… but what it denies is the human being behind all of that,” she explained.
She elaborated on a double standard that persists: Black actors are often “tasked” with showing their “range” by mastering “white work.”
“If I can master Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” — I can do the best I can with Tennessee Williams, but he writes for fragile, white women. Beautiful work, but it’s not me,” she said.
Davis went on to critique the industry’s inequities and its narrow definitions of versatility.
“You can have a white actress who’s 54 or 55 years old, which is a great age to play Mama in “A Raisin in the Sun” — is she going to be able to pull off Mama in “A Raisin in the Sun?” Is she going to be able to pull off Beneatha? Is she going to be able to pull off Molly in Joe Turner’s “Come and Gone”, when Molly says, ‘I ain’t going south’ and make me believe it? They don’t have to do that,” Davis said.
She continued, noting that white students at Juilliard are trained to inhabit white characters. Meanwhile, Black students are expected to show breadth, typically through the Western canon, while the work of Black writers are often excluded.
“Then, once I leave Juilliard, guess what? Most of what I will be asked to do are Black characters, which people will not feel that 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 admitted that she often didn’t feel like herself at Juilliard, despite the irony that her authenticity was what earned her a place there in the first place.