Viola Davis finally made the cover of Vanity Fair magazine after winning an Oscar Award, an Emmy, a Golden Globe Award, and more accolades as a star on the Black A-list.
The dark, moody cover features “The Help” actress wearing an afro wig and a blue dress with a cut out back detail.
“It’s about frickin’ time,” wrote ShowBiz411’s Roger Friedman. “It would have been nicer on the September issue, and a cover photo where you could see her face, but we’ll take it!”
Photo by Apega/WENN.com
The cover was shot by Dario Calmese, the first Black photographer to ever shoot a Vanity Fair cover, according to Friedman.
“Change comes slowly at Vanity Fair,” Friedman wrote. “Radhika Jones [a person of color] has been the editor in chief for how long now? But we’ll take it!”
In the cover feature, Viola said she planned to attend protests calling for justice for George Floyd, the Black Minnesota man who was killed in police custody in May.
Davis’s close friend and neighbor, Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, talked her out of it because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I immediately talked her out of that.” Davis told Vanity Fair via email.
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“Both of us cried,” Spencer continues. “This WAS our civil rights movement, and we were sidelined because of health issues. We felt isolated from the movement.”
Davis told VF she regrets accepting her role in The Help, a box office hit about racism in the deep south told from the perspective of a domestic housekeeper.
“There’s no one who’s not entertained by ‘The Help.’ But there’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth],” Davis said, adding that the film was “created in the filter and the cesspool of systemic racism.”
Photo by WENN.com
Davis, 54, admitted she took the role in the hopes that it would make her “pop” in Hollywood. “I was that journeyman actor, trying to get in,” she said.
And while the movie increased her visibility in Hollywood, the job offers weren’t pouring in.
She said when people ask her why she transitioned to television rather than continue making movies, she said, “I always ask them, What movies? What were those movies? Listen, I got ‘Widows,’ but if I just relied on the Hollywood pipeline… No, there are not those roles.”
