Viola Davis says she regrets role in 'The Help'

0 0 Julius Choudhury September 13, 2018 Edit this post

Viola Davis explained her issues with "The Help" in a new interview. File Photo by Christine Chew/UPI

By Annie Martin, UPI

Viola Davis says she regrets her role in the 2011 film The Help.

The 53-year-old actress explained her issues with the Oscar-winning movie in an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday.

"Have I ever done roles that I've regretted? I have, and The Help is on that list. But not in terms of the experience and the people involved because they were all great," she told the publication.

Davis and Octavia Spencer played housemaids Aibileen and Minny in The Help, which was set in Jackson, Miss., in the 1960s. Davis received an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for the role, while Spencer won Best Supporting Actress.

"I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn't the voices of the maids that were heard," Davis explained.

"I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They're my grandma. They're my mom," she said. "And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work with white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie."

Davis shared similar sentiments about the film at the BAFTA A Life in Pictures event in January 2017.

"I don't feel like it was from our perspective, that's the problem I had with it. I had it from the very beginning," the star said, according to The Telegraph.

"That's the issue I have with a lot of our stories. By the time... it makes it to the screen, the truth is so filtered down, and then it's given to you to make you feel very comfortable," she added.

Davis will next star in the movie Widows, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival this week. She will also return in the ABC series How to Get Away with Murder, which premieres a fifth season Sept. 27.