Viola Davis addressing Hollywood’s wage gap in 2018 video surfaces online

A 2018 video of actress Viola Davis where she addresses the racial wage gap in Hollywood has gone viral on social media. The clip is from her interview with journalist Tina Brown at the Women in the World summit.

“I got the Oscar, I got the Emmy, I got the two Tonys, I’ve done Broadway, I’ve done off-Broadway, I’ve done TV, I’ve done film, I’ve done all of it,” Davis says in the clip. She points out that her career can be compared to Meryl Streep’s or even Julianne Moore and Sigourney Weaver.

Davis continues, “They all came out of Yale, they came out of Julliard, they came out of NYU. They had the same path as me, and yet I am nowhere near them, not as far as money, not as far as job opportunities, nowhere close to it.”

She adds that she is often called a “Black Meryl Streep” and told that there is no other actress like her. “Okay, then if there’s no one like me, you think I’m that you pay me what I’m worth. You give me what I’m worth,” she says.

Watch the video here shared by a Twitter user

Viola Davis ain’t playin with y’all.

Someone give @violadavis her flowers.

Queen. https://t.co/BzXhqvbUjL

— Jimmy Folino #WhoDey 🐅- BLM, StopAsianHate 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrNiceGuy513) June 30, 2020

Celebrities like Naomi Campbell, Gabrielle Union, Octavia Spencer and Yvette Nicole Brown praised the actress for demanding equal and fair pay in the film industry, writes Daily Mail .

The actress is most popular for her role as the criminal defence lawyer Annalise Keating in Shonda Rhimes’ How to Get Away with Murder. Davis has also played the role of Amanda Weller in DC Extended Universe film Suicide Squad. She will reprise her role in the upcoming sequel.

Her breakthrough role was in Doubt (2008) for which she won a Golden Globe and an received an Oscar nomination.