Viola Davis Praises TV Diversity in Emotional SAG Award Speech

At Sunday night’s SAG Awards, my surrogate TV mutha was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Drama Series alongside Robin Wright (House of Cards), Claire Danes (Homeland), Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife), Maggie Smith (Downton Abbey) and Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black).

I’m sure all those women slay (especially Robin Wright), but if you watch How to Get Away with Murder, you know Davis deserved the shit out of this win. Plus, she’s used these opportunities to classily clap back at that New York Times article and say, “I do this.” It’s wondrous. Here’s what Davis (that. hair.) said breathlessly while accepting her SAG trophy:

“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 then 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.”

Also, big up to Shonda Rhimes and the show’s producers, said Davis, “for thinking that a sexualized, messy, mysterious woman could be a 49-year-old dark-skinned African American woman who looks like me.” Complex black characters—what a novel idea.

Beautiful people: