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Viola Davis as Nanisca in TriStar Pictures' THE WOMAN KING. PHOTO BY: Ilze Kitshoff. (file photo) |
Viola Davis has created a place for herself in the history books by winning Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for her memoir Finding Me at the 2023 Grammy Awards. And with this Grammy win, Ms. Davis has achieved EGOT status. She beat out fellow nominees in this category - Questlove, Mel Brooks, Jamie Foxx, and Lin-Manuel Miranda. |
Davis has won an Emmy for How To Get Away With Murder (2015), an Oscar for Fences (2017), and two Tonys for King Hedley II (2001) and Fences (2010). She is only the 18th person to achieve the EGOT.
Viola Davis joins the ranks of artists Whoopi Goldberg, Rita Moreno, Richard Rogers, John Legend, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Jennifer Hudson, Audrey Hepburn, Helen Heyes, John Gielgud, Marvin Hamlisch, Jonathan Tunick, Mel Brooks, Mike Nichols, Scott Rudin, Robert Lopez, Tim Rice, and Alan Menken. Though five other artists have won all four of the awards when, including honorary or special awards - Harry Belafonte, James Earl Jones, Quincy Jones, Liza Minnelli, and Barbra Streisand.
Davis said in her acceptance speech, "I wrote this book [Finding Me] to honor the 6-year-old Viola, to honor her, her life, her joy, her trauma, her everything."
An actor par excellence who is in such control of the character she is essaying, Davis leaves the viewer with an indelible memory of that performance. Be it that emotionally explosive moment in Doubt opposite another brilliant performer, Meryl Streep, or tapping into the contradictory complexities of her Annalise Keating in How To Get Away With Murder, or embodying the true warrior spirit of Nanisca in The Woman King - Viola Davis enthralls. An invisible fire is permanently ignited within her soul, and we, the audience, get to experience the countless facets of this beautiful fire with every performance.
And, although she missed the Oscar nomination for The Woman King, Ms. Davis probably scored an even bigger win and a historical milestone by entering into the rare and desiderated EGOT club. ShEGOT it, indeed!
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