When Tony Award-winning actress Viola Davis listened as her name was called as a nominee for an Academy Award for her performance in Doubt, she said it was no subtle moment.
When Tony Award-winning actress Viola Davis listened as her name was called as a nominee for an Academy Award for her performance in Doubt, she said it was no subtle moment.
“I was jumping up, screaming in my husband’s ear and grabbing his neck. It was truly a real response,” a laughing Davis told the Defender last week.
The South Carolina native was in town promoting the movie and talking about her nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role as a mother whose son may be the victim of sexual abuse by a priest at his school during the 1960s. This is her first nomination.
Davis, widely known for her roles in Antwone Fisher, Solaris, Traffic, Get Rich or Die Tryin’ and Disturbia, said once she read the script, coupled with working with Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams, she had to be part of the mix.
“It was a different kind of Black mother than you would normally see on camera. It’s not what you would expect. It was something to be reckoned with and I had to be part of it,” she said, referring to her role as Mrs. Miller, whose son was seen as an outcast by nearly everyone at the school, and by his own father, because of his homosexuality.
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