Source: Stefanie Keenan / Getty
clip has gone viral for comments she made a few years ago calling out the inequities in Hollywood.
The video was part of an interview with
Tina Brown at the Women of the World event back in 2018. Davis addressed the pay gap between Black women and white women in the entertainment industry.
“I have a career that’s probably comparable to
Meryl Streep, Julianne Moore, Sigourney Weaver. They all came out of Yale, they came out of Julliard, they came out of NYU. They had the same path as me, and yet I am nowhere near them, not as far as money, not as far as job opportunities, nowhere close to it,” Davis explained.
“But I have to get on that phone and people say: ‘You’re a Black Meryl Streep…There is no one like you.’ Okay, then if there’s no one like me, you think I’m that, you pay me what I’m worth. You give me what I’m worth.”
Although the clip can be found on
YouTube, it was
reposted by Twitter user
Carlos Brandt and went viral on Tuesday evening. As of Wednesday morning, it has over 3.8 million views on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/CarlosBrandt/status/1277945275236134912
Many people deeply felt Davis’ words with actresses like
Gabrielle Union reposting the clip. “This!!!!!! All day THIS!!!!” Union captioned her tweet.
Davis’ words continue to resonate as Black people across industries are calling out systematic racism in light of the
recent protests against police brutality. Companies and decision-makers in sectors like the
food services industry, the
music industry and the
movie industry are being called out for years of an unfair and unjust way of operating.
Just last week, Davis was one of the many Black actors to sign on to the
Hollywood 4 Black Lives letter, which made demands such as divesting from police, investing in ant-racist content and more Black leadership in executive positions.
The campaign was launched by the organization BLD PWR, which was
founded by Davis’ “How to Get Away with Murder” co-star
Kendrick Sampson. BLD PWR seeks to “engages culture, education and activism to build and train an inclusive community of entertainers and athletes to advance radical social change.”
When it came to addressing representation in-front of the camera and behind the scenes, the Hollywood 4 Black Lives
letter explained:
“Our agencies, which often serve as industry gatekeepers, don’t recruit, retain or support Black agents. Our unions don’t consider or defend our specific, intersectional struggles. Unions are even worse for our below-the-line crew, especially for Black women.”
With the support of Black people in unions and agencies, decorated actors like Viola Davis can finally get the support they deserve.
In
an interview with Porter magazine, Davis explained further, “If Caucasian women are getting 50 percent of what men are getting paid, we’re not even getting a quarter of what white women are getting paid.”
You can check out people’s praise for Davis’ words of resistance below.
