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Viola Davis believes playing an “unapologetic” Black woman in How to Get Away with Murder contributed to her success and “put [her] on the map.”
Davis, who played Annalise Keating on the ABC thriller, spoke exclusively to PEOPLE on Aug. 16 at The Television Academy Hall of Fame in Los Angeles. During the conversation, the actress said that she made intentional decisions about her performance on the series in order to make the character her “own.”
“I’ve done a lot of TV, but that show sort of just put me on the map, and I think it’s because I made choices that made Annalise Keating my own,” the 60-year-old Oscar winner tells PEOPLE, adding, “I did not follow the sort of script of what you’re supposed to do being a leading lady on television.”
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She explains, “I took my wig off. I took my makeup off. I stayed the size I am. I stayed as Black as I could be. And my age… Everything about me was unapologetic.”
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“Sometimes you make choices in life — it doesn’t always land. But this landed,” she adds.
The hit series ran from 2014 until 2020, and Davis became the first Black woman to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her role in it. Davis used the win to acknowledge the lack of meaningful roles for women of color in television.
“The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity,” Davis said during her 2015 acceptance speech. “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”
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Davis has previously addressed the lack of roles for older women — especially Black women — within the entertainment industry.
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“When it comes to Black women who are over 50, then that is when [the lack of interesting roles] is problematic,” the Oscar winner told PEOPLE while attending the Cannes Film Festival in 2023. “That’s when it is a vast desert.”
However, she said she remained optimistic.
“Women are no longer begging for a seat at the table They’re creating their own. Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Kerry Washington, Issa Rae, Michaela Coel, Halle Berry, Keke Palmer, we can keep going on and on — even Marsai Martin, who is what, 18? They’re empowering themselves by understanding that they’re the change that they want to see,” she said.
