In an interview with the editorial director of People and Entertainment Weekly Jess Cagle, Emmy Award winner Viola Davis shared details about her family’s home and farm on the grounds of a former plantation.
“I think I read one slave narrative of someone who was on that plantation which was horrific,” the HTGAWM star recalled. “160 acres of land, and my grandfather was a sharecropper. Most of my uncles and cousins, they’re farmers; that’s the choice that they had.”
The actress also shared that she keeps a special memento of her family’s history close to her.
“My grandmother’s house was a one room shack. I have a picture of it on my phone because I think it’s a beautiful picture,” she said. “[There was] no running water. No bathroom; just an outhouse, but my mom says that the day I was born, all of my aunts and uncles were in the house; she said everyone was drinking and laughing, and having fun. She said she ate a sardine-mustard-onion-tomato sandwich after I was born.”
“I love that story,” she continued. “It’s a great story to me. It’s a great story of celebration in the midst of what you would feel in a decimated environment, but you could see the joy and the life that can come out of that, because it’s not always about things.”
Check out the entire interview here.
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