Oscar-winning actor Viola Davis has said she regrets starring in the 2011 drama The Help, arguing the film failed to centre the voices of the Black maids it portrayed, per faroutmagazine.co.uk.
Davis called the role a betrayal of herself and her people in a recent interview, despite receiving a Best Actress nomination.
Davis said that while she valued the cast and director Tate Taylor, the film’s premise fell short. “I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard,” she said. “I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They’re my grandma. They’re my mum.”
The Help, based on Kathryn Stockett’s 2009 novel, is set in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963 during the civil rights movement. It follows young white journalist Eugenia ‘Skeeter’ Phelan as she documents the experiences of Black maids Aibileen Clark, played by Davis, and Minny Jackson, played by Octavia Spencer.
The film was a commercial and critical success, earning four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. Spencer won Best Supporting Actress. Yet it faced criticism for its white saviour narrative, a concern Davis echoed years later.
“The white audience at the most can sit and get an academic lesson into how we are. Then they leave the movie theatre and they talk about what it meant. They’re not moved by who we were,” Davis told writer Sonia Saraiya.
Davis described The Help as “created in the filter and the cesspool of systemic racism,” adding: “There’s a part of me that feels like I betrayed myself, and my people, because I was in a movie that wasn’t ready to [tell the whole truth].”
Co-star Bryce Dallas Howard has shared similar views. In a Facebook post, Howard wrote that the film “is a fictional story told through the perspective of a white character and was created by predominantly white storytellers. We can all go further.”
Davis said she took the role as a “journeyman actor, trying to get in.” Before her 2008 breakthrough in Doubt, she focused primarily on stage work and built a reputation on Broadway during the 2000s.
Since Doubt, Davis has earned four Oscar nominations and became the first African-American actor to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. Her credits include Fences, Widows, The Suicide Squad and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Denzel Washington previously called her “one of the great actors of all time,” noting she was “recognised later than some.”
Davis stressed her admiration for the cast remains. “I cannot tell you the love I have for these women, and the love they have for me,” she said. “But with any movie, are people ready for the truth?”
Released when Hollywood was expanding its engagement with race, The Help was initially embraced by many viewers. In Britain, audiences often encountered American civil rights history through film, and the movie found strong support. Debate over its perspective and authorship intensified in later years as discussions about representation and authenticity moved to the centre of the entertainment industry.
•Featured image: Viola Davis/Far Out/YouTube Still
