The actress undergoes a thrilling transformation in Netflix’s awards contender.
2 be on the way?
At this point, it’s cliche to compareViola DavistoMeryl Streep.
Illustration by EW: Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
“The spirit of an artist is you always feel like you’re going to be found out.
That is how I felt withMa Rainey,” Davis tells EW about the legendary blues singer.
WhenBlack BottomproducerDenzel Washingtonoffered her the role, she “suggested a slew of other actresses.”
They would suss somebody out in a minute."
(Davis describes her as “a little bit of a fascist.")
I want to look cuter.'
Or, ‘I want to not have the gold teeth because it may be distracting.’
Once you put that mask on, Davis continues, “Everything else becomes the hard work.
Everything else in terms of figuring out her pathology, figuring out how she fought on the day-to-day basis.
From the time the movie starts to [the time] it ends, it is a chess game.
It is a game of power and value.
It’s constantly, ‘Okay.
No…. You want to take what from me?Nuh-uh.You’re not going to take that from me.
Director George C. Wolfe expands on his star’s example with a parallel metaphor.
“It’s a boxing match in which the words become the punches.
“He is representative of a new phase of music that will render her extinct.
He is unruly and undisciplined.”
Adds Wolfe: “Levee is a metaphor for this country.
Davis remembers her climatic dressing-down of Levee as particularly gratifying.
“I’m a person myself who has issues with confrontation.
I felt like that entire sequence was about ownership of power,” she says.
“It was about letting every motherf—er in the room know who’s the boss.”
