Watch: Viola Davis accepts SAG award and talks diversity in Hollywood

At the Screen Actors Guild Awards last year, Viola Davis won the title of outstanding lead actress in a drama and gave this great speech on diversity and representation in Hollywood, thanking the creators of How to Get Away With Murder for believing that a “sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned, African-American woman who looks like me.” 

This year also marked the first time in the SAG awards history that both lead actress titles went to black women, as Uzo Aduba won for outstanding lead actress in a comedy for her role in Orange Is the New Black. Still, there’s always more progress to be made. As Davis said on the red carpet, “We’re in the 21st century now. People are multicultural now. We know more now about the world and what the world looks like, and it’s got to be reflected in the scripts.”

Transcript:

When I tell my daughter stories at night, inevitably a few things happen. Number one, I use my imagination. I always start with life and then I build from there. And the other thing that happens is she always says, ‘Mommy, can you put me in the story?’ And, you know, it starts from the top up. So I’d like to thank Paul Lee, Shonda Rhimes, Betsy Beers, Bill D’Elia and Peter Nowalk for thinking that a sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old, dark-skinned, African-American woman who looks like me. Thank you to the Screen Actors Guild.  Thank you to Estelle and Lisa Castello and Michael Adler at CAA for having my back. And thank you to all the people who love me exactly how God made me. And that’s my beautiful husband, Julius, my four-year-old daughter at home, Genesis, and my mother, Mary Alice Davis.