Viola Davis says director called her by his maid’s name: ‘I knew him for 10 years’
BySamantha Ibrahim
May 20, 2022 9:59am
Updated
Viola Davis says director called her by his maid’s name: ‘I knew him for 10 years’
Viola Davis is not the help.
The Oscar, Tony and Emmy winner has revealed that an unnamed filmmaker — a friend of nearly a decade — slipped up and called her by his maid’s name.
Davis, 56, dropped the bombshell claim during the “Women in Motion” event Thursday at the Cannes Film Festival: “He called me Louise — and I found out it was because his maid’s name was Louise.”
The diss went down when the now-revered “The First Lady” star was just starting out in the film biz. Davis added that it was not an isolated incident — but the sort of disturbing occurrence that happened repeatedly.
“I knew him for 10 years,” said Davis, clad in a scarlet suit. “I was maybe around 30 at the time, so it was a while ago — but what you have to realize is that those micro-aggressions happen all the time.”
The star — who earned an Oscar nomination for playing a maid in 2011’s “The Help,” a role Davis has said she regrets accepting — also discussed how race typically plays a role in the projects that she isn’t offered. “A lot of it is based in race. It really is,” she said.
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