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This 2018 Viola Davis Speech About Women Of Color In Hollywood Is Still Relevant Today

Viola Davis' full interview with Tina Brown at the Women in the World Los Angeles Salon

Conversations about diversity in Hollywood are always important, now more than ever.

A 2018 speech made by Viola Davis about the plights of women of color in Hollywood has resurfaced and gone viral amid the Black Lives Matter movement conversations about diversity and representation on screen.


Bakari Sellers tweeted this 43 second clip of Viola Davis' 2018 interview with Tina Brown. It already has almost four million views and over fifty thousand likes.

The speech comes from the 2018 Women in the World Conference, an annual summit launched in 2010 by journalist Tina Brown. The conference gathers women leaders, activists and change-makers to share their stories and elicit change.

Davis closed the conference in 2018 with a discussion with Brown about working as a women in Hollywood. In the short clip, she talks about constantly being compared to white actresses, saying:

"I got the Oscar. I got the Emmy. I got the two Tony's. I've done Broadway. I've done Off-Broadway. I've done TV. I've done film. I've done all of it. 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. 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."

During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, these conversations about racial inequality in Hollywood becoming increasingly important. This video proves that these conversations have been occurring for years and the fact that this is still equally as relevant now proves that there is much more work to be done.

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