“How To Get Away With Murder” Star Viola Davis scolded Hollywood executives in the wake of the #OscarsSoWhite scandal as she accepted her SAG award.
On Sunday night, Viola Davis won the Screen Actors’ Guild award for Best Actress in a TV Series, Drama, for ABC’s “How To Get Away With Murder.”
Davis, a Tony, SAG, and Drama Desk award-winning actress, delivered an elegant scolding to Hollywood executives just two weeks after the scandal of the “white-est” Oscar nominations since 1998. All 20 actors and actresses nominated for Oscars this year are white, leading social media fans to dub them #OscarsSoWhite.
“When I tell my daughter stories at night, inevitably, a few things happen,” Davis told the audience. “Number one, I use my imagination. I always start with life, and then I build from there. And then the other thing that happens is she always says, ‘Mommy, can you put me in the story?’ And you know, it starts from the top up.”
She also thanked the producers of “How To Get Away With Murder,” including Shonda Rimes, for “thinking that a sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned, African-American woman who looks like me.”
Davis then thanked “all the people who love me exactly how God made me.”
The audience delivered a standing ovation.
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