Viola Davis admits ‘scrutiny’ of playing real-life characters is ‘challenging’

Viola Davis finds it more liberating playing fictional characters because portraying real people comes with too much “scrutiny”.

The Oscar-winning actress played blues singer Ma Rainey in the 2020 film Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Michelle Obama in the 2022 TV miniseries The First Lady, one of the rare occasions when she received poor reviews for her performance.

During an interview with The Times, Davis admitted she finds more enjoyment and freedom in portraying fictional characters because the level of expectation isn’t so impossibly high.

“What’s challenging with real-life characters is the preciseness of it – and the scrutiny: ‘She didn’t hold her mouth that way, her eyes didn’t look like that,'” she shared. “When you use your imagination you get Air Force One (in which Harrison Ford played a fictional president) when they strapped on parachutes and jumped out of the plane as it was blowing up. Sparking the imagination is the cosmic carrot to waking you up inside.”

Davis recently played a fictional president herself in the Prime Video action movie G20. Her leader, President Danielle Sutton, takes on a team of terrorists after they take over the G20 summit in South Africa.

The 59-year-old was once in line to play slave-turned-abolitionist Harriet Tubman and American politician Barbara Jordan in screen biopics. She insisted that they fell through due to their scripts, not because of her previous experience with playing real people.

“It’s not that I’m not attracted to real-life stories, it’s just that they require a different level of commitment and expectation than if you’re playing Thor or Iron Man,” she stated.

Davis is currently filming the movie adaptation of the young adult fantasy novel, Children of Blood and Bone, alongside Idris Elba and Cynthia Erivo.