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Viola Davis Claims Julliard Tried to Mold Her Into a ‘Perfect White Actress’

The actress says there were ‘parameters’ around the plays that she and her peers were able to perform.

While The Julliard School may have equipped Viola Davis with the tools to become an EGOT recipient, the actress doesn’t have a glowing review for what she was taught at the institution.

Davis was a guest on the April 27th episode of the ‘Talk Easy’ podcast, where around the 29-minute mark of the video below, host Sam Fragoo asked whether Julliard was molding Davis into a good actress or a perfect white actress?”

"Definitely a perfect white actress," the ‘G20’ star said. "What it looks like–it's technical training in order to deal with the classics…the Strindbergs, and the O'Neills, and the Chekhovs, and the Shakespeares. I totally understand that.”

But Davis admitted what the training “denies is the human being behind all of that."

Davis added that as a Black actress, she’s “always being tasked” to exhibit her “range by doing white work.” Namely, she mentioned Tennessee Williams classic ‘A Streetcar Named Desire,’ saying that the late playwright’s work was for “fragile, white women.”

"Beautiful work, but it's not me,” she insisted, adding that “parameters” were placed on herself and other Black actors in class.

The former ‘How to Get Away With Murder star’ went on to explain that after leaving Julliard, her work transformed to a discomforting realization. “Most of what I'll be asked to do are Black characters, which people will not feel I am Black enough,” she said. “So then I'm caught in a quagmire, this sort of in between place, of sort of not understanding how to use myself as the canvas.”

“Julliard was an out-of-body experience, because, once again, I did not think that I could use me. Me needed to be left at the front door, even though me was what got me in there,” she concluded.

Davis, who boasts a stacked resume including ‘Fences,’ ‘Air,’ ‘The Woman King’ and ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,’ has since become a premiere actress, last being awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the 83rd Golden Globes.

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