The fact of the matter is that Viola Davis was dead right when she used her historic 2015 Emmy Award acceptance speech to contextualize the discussion on inequities in Hollywood. “?‘In my mind, I see a line,’?” said Viola, who, in winning the Emmy, became the first African American actress ever to take home the award for best actress in a drama. “?‘And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me, over that line. But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.’ That was Harriet Tubman in the 1800s. And let me tell you something: the only thing that separates women of color from anyone else is opportunity. You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there.”
She went on to thank a grip of folk—me included—who are working tirelessly in front of and behind the camera to be the habitual line-steppers, bringing an influx of quality work to television with shows like How to Get Away with Murder, Scandal, Empire, Being Mary Jane, Gotham, Black-ish, Bones, and the like. Still, while television finally blazes its brilliant path, big-screen projects continue to place black actresses squarely in the margins, with leading roles practically nonexistent and pay for the work that is there as paltry as the opportunities, despite the depth of talent we bring to the table. Consider this: A white peer on the same come-up as me pulled in a half million dollars for an independent movie she got right after she finished a small-budget film that got her similar critical acclaim as I got for Hustle. Her movie was neither big-budget nor particularly memorable, but she still got paid. But demanding and holding out for a half million in a much-talked-about film starring one of the biggest stars in the game could have cost me, the black actress who worked alongside her in the same movie that brought her the same accolades, my job. The math really is pretty simple: there are way more talented black actresses than there are intelligent, meaningful roles for them, and we’re consistently charged with diving for the crumbs of the scraps, lest we starve.
This is exactly how a studio can get away with paying the person who’s name is third on the call sheet of a big-budget film less than 2 percent what it’s paying the person whose name is listed first. I knew the stakes: no matter how talented, no matter how many accolades my prior work had received, if I pushed for more money, I’d be replaced and no one would so much as blink. So I took my little check, booked myself a small efficiency suite at the local Embassy Suites, and got my ass on to work.
Let me put this out there: a six-figure paycheck and a three-month stay in a hotel is a very big deal where I come from, and this is never far from my mind today as I move through the world, tucking my A-lister coins in my purse and dropping my luggage at the front doors of some of the finest five-star lodging there is to offer. I know that this didn’t have to be, and I’m quite clear that the accouterments that come with being a popular celebrity can be here today and gone just as quickly tomorrow. But damn if I didn’t have an attitude sitting up in that dingy room in the Embassy Suites, staring at that kitchenette with the old, dusty microwave taking up all the counter space, trying to block out the noise of the five-member family next door bumping up against the walls and playing their television way too loudly while I tried to get myself prepared to play Queenie. I’d sit on the edge of my bed and stew. I was so bitter and angry about so many things—all of them complicated by my dad’s death. I wanted to cop an attitude. Instead, I took it to God. I prayed so hard in that hotel room that my knees were black. And finally, He led me to the mission: make it so they never, ever forget you, and then go claim what’s yours.
That’s exactly what I did. Instead of wasting that energy continuing to be mad, I used it to build my character into an emotional, no-nonsense but huge-hearted woman who loved big, despite circumstances that weren’t ideal for a black woman in the early 1900s, barely fifty years after the end of slavery, in the midst of Jim Crow. Whenever I heard footsteps above my head, or felt unappreciated, or thought about my financial situation, I poured every ounce of that feeling into her. I transferred my sadness to Queenie, too; after all, as a black woman in the segregated South, poor, lonely, barren, and about to wind her way through the Great Depression, she had a lot to be depressed about. This is how Queenie is living, I kept saying to myself. She’s in the basement in the corner room under the stairs. The people she takes care of live on top of her head, literally, and they live better than her. This ain’t about you. This is not your story. This is about her. I’d listen to music and lyrics from the era—lots of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, Cole Porter, and Bessie Smith—to capture the sentiment and mood of that period, and I’d study, too, how an aging body breaks down, so that I could accurately reflect the ailments of a seventy-year-old woman. And every word of prayer I had in my heart while reflecting on my own life in that room at the Embassy Suites I tucked into Queenie. Those prayers manifested themselves in her eyes and words and even her fingers, which unconsciously but constantly rubbed on and grabbed the simple cross that hung around her neck. I leaned on Him. She did, too.