Samuel L. Jackson & Viola Davis | Actors on Actors - Full Conversation

I remember there was a sign on the diehard wall in the office that said, beware the toes you step on today for they may be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow. Absolutely. You don't want to kiss that ass. Never forget that. How do you feel about rolling around town, seeing yourself on these big old billboards? I don't see that as myself. I see it as something else. You don't? Shell Obama, the other Viola Davis. You tell your work wife that your actual wife said to stay out of our family business. I don't marry the two, because otherwise it's too difficult. It's too difficult to what? It was okay to see myself when I was doing a play. Because it's different when you're doing a play. Yeah, but that's totally different too. Yeah, it's totally different. So that was exciting. You see yourself in front of the theater, on the board. That's Broadway though, because back when you were off Broadway doing stuff, like when I was doing stuff at Henry Street or NEC, it just had the name of the play. There were very few pictures out front. That's because we're two different generations. Exactly, I wanted to ask you about that. So when were you at Juilliard? I was at Juilliard from 89 to 93. Now you're aging me. I was group 22. I was just about to leave New York at that time. I think Jungle Fever got me out of New York. Oh yeah, wonderful. I was about to leave at that time. The first time I remember seeing you was, you were playing like this mean-ass cop on Law & Order. Oh, I love that one. You know, we all had our pass-through Law & Order phase. That was one of two shows that was shot in New York, until they started shooting New York undercover. It was only Law & Order, the Cosby show. When were you doing your Henry Street, Negro Ensemble? What years were those? We moved to New York Halloween night 1976. We drove from Atlanta to New York, pulled into that Halloween parade down in the village. Oh yeah? We were like, what's going on here? It was like, wow, this is crazy. We were there during the 70s before you got there. Oh yeah, my stomping grounds were in the 90s. When I got my first play at the Public Theater, making $250 a week, I was like, it's a wrap. I've made it. I have made it. How many people from your pounding the pavement and going to audition days actually are people that we know now? Probably a lot of them. I know Anjanue Ellis came out of NYU around the same time. I don't know, you go along in your career. I never thought of the ultimate outcome. I never thought, I want to be famous. That's what I'm working on. I want to work with the Steven Spielbergs of it all. I just went from job to job because I loved it. It just sort of was like the notoriety was just an overflow of the work. You have so many actors now who are so intentional about where they want to end up. People showed up to be famous. Exactly. That was their whole intent. I don't really have any criticism of that. I don't want to be vicious about that. It's not a criticism. It's an observation. In the beginning, there's a point when you first start doing it or that got your attention that made you say, I want to be an actor or I want to be a movie star or I want to be famous. You have those things. As you do the work, if you become a real actor, all that stuff becomes in the back of your mind. Especially after I got sober, the work became the thing. I was doing Pulitzer Prize winning plays. You're fine. I did two original works at Yale in August and then I did Soldiers Play and all this other stuff. It was about the work. Absolutely. It became a byproduct of what happened. Absolutely. I figured if I went to five auditions a week, two of those jobs were going to be mine. I just had to figure out which ones they were. I felt sorry for the other people that didn't hire me. Keep on moving on. That's what we did. Latanya would say, why are you taking that piddling ass job? It's two days on a movie and that person's going to be a big director one day and the writer's going to write mother stuff. Sometimes that works out. Even amongst PAs and stuff. I remember being on set or meeting kids who were trying to get into business and just being nice to them and talking to them. Five years down the line, that person's a producer. You don't remember me, but you were so nice to me on that thing. I had to get you on this show. Thank God. The fruits of seeing the right thing. I remember there was a sign on the Die Hard wall that said, beware the toes you step on today for they may be connected to the ass you have to kiss tomorrow. Absolutely. You don't want to kiss that ass. Never forget that. Okay, this is awesome. I had a chance to meet a bunch of people and understand that certain kinds of actors do certain things that you say, I don't want to be that person. You see how people react to them. Some actors that are so big that you look at them and they were so amazingly nice to you. Yeah. Sat and talked to you about the most mundane things. My big thing was doing 10 weeks of work in the theater because you did 10 weeks of work when you went back to New York you could collect your unemployment. Oh yeah. Which was like $360 a week. I was like, I could pay my rent with that. I was happy and I got my health insurance. For me, I'm always interested in actors I'm going to use the big H word who are not humble. Because for me, it's a very humbling profession. I think about my entire career and I'm like, I did a lot of crappy plays. And then I had some really good performances. And the crappy plays, trust me, were not intentionally crappy. I just literally did the best I could but depending on all the other elements that came together, you don't know how it's going to land. A lot of times you're there helping yourself until you find that person that unlocks another little piece of this thing that will make you so much better than you used to be. Absolutely. And a lot of times it's the role that unlocks you. Were you in a space where somebody would get plucked and you knew you were in the right place? It's like when I was at the public doing Mother Courage all of a sudden I was Morgan's understudy. And he got street smart. And it was like, wow, Morgan Freeman. Or we were doing Soldiers play and Denzel left to go to do Saint Elsewhere and then he started doing movies. But he would come back and do the play when we were in the touring company when he wasn't shooting, he would come back and do the play. And just hang out with us. Fish, out. Wesley, out. Alfred, out. Okay, I'm in the right place, it's just not my turn. Exactly. I had promised myself I was never coming here until they sent for me. Me too. Because I had too many friends that left for pilot season, came out here. This is a finishing school. It's not a place of discovery. And for me when I got seven guitars with Lloyd Richards that was it. That's when I felt like I was plucked. I really did. What a blessing to have that man. Oh my God. When you come to rehearsal every day to talk to you about what you're doing or ask you what you're going to do different today. And I talk to young actors and they go, what do I need to do? And I say, have you done a play? And they look at you like, you can't learn to act doing scenes. Having done something from beginning to end has been very useful in terms of this whole streaming service thing that happens now. That allows you to take something that's episodic and take the character the long road. Remember Jackie Kennedy? Her blood splattered pink Chanel suit? Her kids had to see that. Someone had to explain that to them, Barack. How does that help you wrap your mind or bring yourself into becoming a living person like Michelle Obama? And what you had to do to get yourself in that place to portray somebody who's alive and will watch you be them. Well Sam, besides taking a good shot of vodka, here's the thing. It is very difficult playing a real life person especially someone who's occupied the space of the White House. Someone who could give an opinion that could cause a war. There is a shroud of protection, of liability. And as an actor, that is a nightmare. The reason is because when you enter into any character, you have to be armed with as much information as possible. And all of it. Not just, where did you go to school? What do you drink? Do you love your husband? Do you fight with your husband? Do you fight with your kids? What's your biggest fear? All of those things that you can't get at. And so then you have to fill it in. And you have to fill it in for an audience who feels such an ownership of that character that they don't want to see anything mar the image. And that's exactly antithetical towards what we do. We need the mess. That's what makes us human. But here's the thing. Here's the other side of it. For me, to speak in the abstract, I think the one thing you really have to be armed with as an actor is courage. When you move through your life and you see human behavior, that has to be put in your lexicon so that when you play a character and you don't see all the gaps being filled in, you have to fill it in. With whatever imagination, what you've seen in the past from other people, what I know being a black woman with Michelle Obama, and you have to be bold enough to inject it into your choice and go for it. That's all you can do. I mean, listen, I did it on how to get away with murder. It's like, okay, if you always ask why, right? Yeah, but Annalisa's yours. Here's the thing. If I died at 90 and you went to, I don't know, my sisters, people, friends who knew me, and you said, because I need to gather information about Viola. I want to play Viola in a biopic. I don't care how much information you get from them. You're only going to get 40% of who I am. Well, yeah. Where I live and where I lie, a lot of who I am takes place in the private recesses of my mind. Things that I will never even share, even with my spouse. Moments that they haven't even seen. I'm just saying that even if you're playing someone in a biopic, you got to do the same thing. You have to ask why, and then you have to take a chance with it. Why is she angry in this scene? Well, she's angry because this man is pissing her off. Why is this man pissing her off? Because she doesn't like his glasses. Why doesn't she like his glasses? Because they were the glasses of this guy she dated when she was in college. Why did she not like those glasses? Because the guy did something to her in college. Do you know what I'm saying? How do you keep your preconceptions of who we've seen her publicly or who we wanted her to be? Because everybody's got a different idea of who Michelle is and who they wanted her to be or the strength and the perfection of a first lady that we have for her that we don't have for other people or other first ladies. You're limited by the script. Always a pet peeve of mine. Number one on my list. Limited by the script. If it's there, it's great to play. If it's not there, you have to fill it in and sometimes that's almost impossible. Two, it's not my job to give you an image of someone you want to see. It is not my job whatsoever. It's not in the job description. I was always surprised by this. If you are a painter and you go to your house, you could paint a picture and someone said, let me see your picture. I could show you the picture and you're a painter. You can't do that as an actor. I can't say I play King Lear in my living room. Okay? Because I need the writer, I need the director and then finally I need the audience. The audience has got to come in locked and loaded for me to work as an actor. Okay? You're not coming locked and loaded if you come to the theater and you say, this is just what I want to see. I don't want to see anything else. I want to see that, this, and this, and that. Then it's not my job to make you feel comfortable. If I'm doing a Marvel movie and doing something, absolutely that's my job. But it's not my job if I'm playing a real person. It's my job to give you the truth. To serve it on the silver platter. To make you feel those moments that you have in private that I'm bringing to the public. They may make you squirm, but if you recognize it, then I've done my job as an actor. Now the other thing, it's not my job to make you very comfortable eating your Diet Coke, popcorn, and Sour Patch Kids. You know? When you were doing Ptolemy Graves, I'm sure that that was your process, absolutely. Walter wrote Ptolemy in a specific way. I've been living with that book for 12 years or so. I read it once a year. I kept wanting to do it. By the time I had an opportunity to actually portray him, I had a very solid idea of who he was. Even though Walter wrote it, and I would say, well, Walter, do I have to say da, da, da? He's like, you know the book better than I do, so say what you want to say. I had that freedom to go in there and make Ptolemy who I wanted Ptolemy to be. I knew how uncomfortable the first episode would be. Which is one of those things I was talking about. Being able to do it as a six-part series gave me the opportunity to expand on what I knew him to be. That gave me the opportunity to take my time and let Ptolemy breathe into people's lives, visually, watching it. I knew the first episode was going to be uncomfortable for people. People who have been touched by dementia or Alzheimer's and had to care for a person to have it or are living with someone who has it right now, it was not going to be uncomfortable for them, but I wasn't going to run from it and try to make it easy for them. I just wanted them to know that it'll get better, but this is the reality of what's happening here. He's in this place, and when those people are alone or when they're sitting there and they're just staring into space, something's going on back there. You may not know what it is, and you may not be able to get them to explain it to you, but they're living in this particular thing. You alright? Reggie really dead. Yeah. Well, who killed him? How do you know? It was bothersome for a lot of people. People said they had to stop watching the episode one. Hang in there. It's going to get better. I loved being him, and when people ask me what your favorite moments were doing it, my favorite moments were being alone and being just me with Solomon. Sitting there eating beans out of that can and licking the spoon and staring out the window. Being in that space or walking around and picking up something that flashes back that gives you a memory of something. Being able to be comfortable in losing myself in this person. We tend to do that a lot. I play characters that I know people aren't supposed to like, and enjoyed it. Like Steven in Django or something. That's my job, to make you uncomfortable. People go, oh my god. Yeah, good. That's satisfying for us. To know that we did that. That you don't need to be comfortable watching me all the time. I was never always comfortable watching you as Annalise, but there it is. Speaking of, how do you feel the bouncing back and forth between the short form movie life and doing what you do in television as in a series? Because I haven't had that opportunity. It's just like what you said when you have a series, you're just given an opportunity to grow a character. My question though, is when you're doing a series like that, when you started How to Get Away with Murder, did you know the first season, where you were going to go? No. To the end? So every week you come in and you get surprised, but you have to find a way to create a life that's connected in that way? Yeah. That's a challenge. Huh? And it's a huge challenge. That's huge. My big thing is, you're not always going to be put in the perfect situation as an actor. That's why I'm always interested in the actor who says, I'm going to stay home until I get that Academy Award winning role. Which is great, but a lot of times, it's not going to be perfect. You're going to get on set and all of a sudden you're given a scene, it's like, well that scene wasn't even there last night. That scene changes everything. Oh my God, what is Annalise doing now? She's killing another person? Why? Then you have to make sense out of it. Sometimes, certain characters you play are a great opportunity to experiment. For me, with Annalise, I was giving an opportunity, especially as a dark-skinned black woman, 47 years old, she's sexualized, she's sociopathic, she's all of those things. It gave me a really big, bold opportunity, a vessel to be an unpredictable, messy woman. When, for instance, if you see a white woman on screen, you could say, she looks like my mother. A lot of studio heads would say that. She could look like my mother, my sister, my aunt. The woman who I wanted to marry when I was in high school, but I didn't because I wanted to marry the blonde woman. You see the possibilities. That wasn't me in my career. My possibilities were the crack addicts, the mothers who were in challenged situations, watching their sons die, the ambiguous lawyer or the judge. I was happy to get them. Don't get me wrong. I was. I made the most of it. This was the first opportunity I had to play a woman. It was in the midst of a melodrama. We can admit, a lot of the situations were fantastical. It was still my opportunity to boldly step out and make choices that could surprise people and to make people see me, really see me as a woman. It was an opportunity to do that. That's how I saw Annalise. There were a lot of people who said, oh, she's been miscast, which I'm always interested in as an actor because I'm thinking to myself, we're about people, right? How can you be miscast as a person? I don't understand that, but that's how I saw Annalise. Now, in terms of movies and TV, it depends on the script. That's what I'm going to say. It depends on the script. See, it's easier to sit at home and figure out what you're going to do from page one to page 135 than it is to come in and there's an episode this week that's about this, and then there's an episode the next week that's about this, and you not know what Shonda has in her mind that she's going to throw at you that you have to work the twists and turns of something to throw people off or to keep them coming, but you get surprised every week when you go in to read that week's episode. It's like, oh, ----. I'm doing this this week? What? But it's not the ultimate journey. You can't say it's the ultimate journey. You just have to know who you're playing. Yeah, well, life has to surprise you the same way that character gets surprised by situations pop up that you have to solve a problem. That's where improv comes in, right? Because I did improv for almost a whole year in college. Because what they say is you have to say yes to your partner, right? You have to circle back, though, to the one question I'm sure everybody wants to know. So when Michelle called you, did she tell you you got it right? Did she call you and say, Carol, that was me? No conversations with Michelle. Oh, dang. I just said, yeah, well, you know. I just called her and said, so, tomorrow I'm shooting this scene here and they want me to do. What would you do? With every character you play, you're jumping off a cliff. You are. I look forward to it. Yeah, me too. Listen, I do too. I make plans. In movies, I can make a plan. Like I was asking you about doing a series. You can't really make a plan because they're surprising you every week with stuff. That's why improv comes in. That sort of free-falling. Knowing that you've done your work, you've done your work in terms of who is Annalise? What are her memories? What are her dreams? What did she do? What does she live for? All of that. That's all you need to know. The words and everything else are just there. But if you've done the foundation, that work, of really exploring that, and here's the thing. You can surprise yourself even with that. Even with who she is. That's the thing that's hard, by the way. If you say, you know, she's a criminal defense attorney. I'm just making, she's a criminal defense attorney. Then you show up one day that says, no, you're a prosecutor. Or you show up one day and they say, okay, you're eight months pregnant. It's like, wait a minute. Last season, I wasn't pregnant. So, what happened? You gotta make it compelling. You gotta make a choice. As an actor, see, once again, you have to have a process.