The Many Lives of Viola Davis

Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso

Before Viola Davis (How To Get Away with Murder) became an EGOT-winning actor, she was an observer. Her work takes the human experience and transmutes it, offering a mirror and a window into ourselves.

Today, we sit to unpack her recent, liberating projects in The Woman King (4:20) and G20 (4:50), the formative years she spent growing up in Rhode Island (10:00), and how she captured those familial memories in her 2022 memoir Finding Me (15:00). Then, we talk about Viola’s start as a performer (20:00), what she learned attending Juilliard (30:00), and the quagmire she faced as a Black actor emerging on Broadway and in Hollywood post-graduation (35:00).

On the back-half, Davis reflects on a scene from August Wilson’s play Seven Guitars (45:00), her singular experience acting alongside Meryl Streep in Doubt (48:00), and the ways her life transformed during Shonda Rhymes’ How to Get Away with Murder and Steve McQueen’s Widows (53:00). To close, Viola shares her views on legacy (1:02:30) and how she finds her way back home, each and every day (1:05:00).

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