BAFTAs 2017: Viola Davis voices skepticism about success of #OscarsSoWhite

Davis says forecasts for next year’s award season had already been floated and there was a dearth of African-American names

Viola Davis has voiced her scepticism about the success of the “Oscars So White” backlash at this year’s BAFTAs.

The actor, who won a BAFTA for best-supporting actress for her role in Fences, said while this had been a strong year for African-American actors it could easily be an anomaly. Fences, Hidden Figures and Moonlight have all done well out of awards season.

“I believe what still is a deficiency is that we have one year a plethora of African American movies and then the next year nothing,” the 51-year-old said at a press conference after her BAFTA win.

Davis said forecasts for next year’s award season had already been floated and there was a dearth of African-American names in the mix.

She used the address to warn that the future of her six-year-old daughter Genesis might be more difficult than her own.

“She has to understand that she’s got be the change she wants to be,” Davis told reporters. “She can’t assume people’s minds have been woken up – we see that in the political climate now. We have to be the instrument of change now.”

Davis used her speech to pay tribute to her late father, a horse trainer who “died of cancer at MacDonald’s” where he worked as a janitor.

“One of the most devastating things that went through my mind when he took his last breath was: did his life matter?”

She also spoke of her father in her acceptance speech, garnering a massive applause. “He said that our lives matter as African-Americans. The horse groomer, the sanitation worker, the people who grew up under the heavy brute of Jim Crow, the people who did not make it into history books but they have a story and those stories deserve to be told because they lived”.

This is by no means the first time Davis has spoken out about the lack of diversity in the film industry. After winning the Screen Actors Guild Award for supporting actress in January she was probed about whether she thought the increase in black acting Oscar nominees this year was a direct response to last year’s #OscarSoWhite movement.

“There’s a lot of typecasting - age, sex, color, dark-skinned, light-skinned,” said Davis. “Response to OscarSoWhite? No. I think that every nominee from Naomie Harris to Octavia Spencer to Hidden Figures to Fences to Moonlight to Mahershala Ali are up there because they deserve to be there. They’re not there because of the colour of their skin. They put in the work. So the answer to that is no.”

Davis also discussed the lack of opportunities for people of colour in leading roles, saying: “I saw an absence of women who look like me on TV eight years ago. “And to tell you the truth, we’re still sort of absent in leading roles, especially if you’re darker than a paper bag.”