The Hollywood Reporter has been doing “roundtable” discussions with various actors ahead of the Emmy nominations announcement (July 16th). Last week, some of the presumptive Emmy contenders for men in dramas got their roundtable, and this week, it’s the women in drama. The roundtable consisted of Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Lange, Lizzy Caplan and Ruth Wilson. Just a word on Lizzy Caplan: Masters of Sex killed it in their first season but the second season was AWFUL and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if the hype around the show at this point was non-existent. Anyway, you can read the THR piece here. I just wanted to highlight a few comments from Maggie and Viola, because I’m sure people will be talking about them:
Maggie Gyllenhaal on “not being pretty enough”: “When I was starting out, I used to hear “no” a lot and still do. And, “You’re not sexy enough. You’re not pretty enough.” When I was really young, I auditioned for this really bad movie with vampires. I wore a dress to the audition that I thought was really hot. Then I was told I wasn’t hot enough. My manager at the time said, “Would you go back and sex it up a little bit?” So I put on leather pants, a pink leopard skinny camisole and did the audition again and still didn’t get the part. After that, I was like, “OK, f— this!”
Viola on feeling like she was typecast as “downtrodden, mammy-ish” women: “There was absolutely no precedent for [my character on HTGAWM]. I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualized role in TV or film. I’m a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualized woman. I was the prototype of the “mommified” role. Then all of a sudden, this part came, and fear would be an understatement. When I saw myself for the first time in the pilot episode, I was mortified. I saw the fake eyelashes and, “Are you kidding me? Who is going to believe this?” And then I thought: “OK, this is your moment to not typecast yourself, to play a woman who is sexualized and do your investigative work to find out who this woman is and put a real woman on TV who’s smack-dab in the midst of this pop fiction.
Viola on likability: “The thing I had to get used to with TV was the likability factor. People have to like you, people have to think you’re pretty. I was going to have to face a fact that people were going to look at me and say: “I have no idea why they cast her in a role like this. She just doesn’t fit. It should have been someone like Halle Berry. It’s her voice, and she doesn’t walk like a supermodel in those heels.” And people do say that, they do. But what I say to that is the women in my life who are sexualized are anywhere from a size zero to a size 24. They don’t walk like supermodels in heels. They take their wig and makeup off at night. So this role was my way of saying, “Welcome to womanhood!” It’s also healed me and shown a lot of little dark-skinned girls with curly hair a physical manifestation of themselves.
Taraji on her career goals: “I want to play a superhero. I want to be a Bond girl. I want to play a man. I want to play a white woman.”
First of all, Taraji as a Bond Girl. Let that sink in. I could totally see that. Especially with Daniel Craig. She would WRECK James Bond. And it would be so enjoyable. As for Viola being Viola and being able to own every part of her life, her looks, her career, her mind… I am such a Viola fan-girl. I love her a crazy amount.
Maggie talking about not being considered “pretty” by casting directors… it goes right along with Maggie being told that she was “too old” at 37 to play the love interest of a 55-year-old. Stories like that make me want to burn the place down.
Photos courtesy of THR, WENN.
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