Power of unselfishness
OSCAR NOMINEES: WASHINGTON AND DAVIS DISCUSS THEIR WORK Awards season darling Fences opens today.
Viola Davids (VD) and Denzel Washington (DW) talk about their Oscar-nominated roles in Fences.
What do you recall from when you saw the original Broadway production of Fences?
DW: I related more to Cory [played by Courtney Vance] because I was closer in age to Cory. And I remember how fragile Mary Alice [as Rose] looked compared to James Earl Jones. I’d seen James do Othello with Christopher Plummer on Broadway. And I’d seen him do Oedipus the King at St John the Divine. In fact, I went backstage. He didn’t know me, but I guess he sensed I was a young actor, so he let me hang around. He was meeting people, and I’m walking around looking at his makeup, and he had all of his rings from the play. I started putting them on, and you know James is a big man, so the rings were like bracelets. I just remember how big he was and that voice, that power.
For you as an actor, what was the difference between playing Troy on stage and on screen?
DW: I couldn’t imagine trying to do this film, having not done it on stage first to figure out who Troy is. There was no time to be trying to figure that out when we’re shooting a movie. So, number one, I had time to know the character.
And I knew that we did a production that worked, that we got the response from the audience and the accolades and all that kind of stuff. I knew it worked.
I don’t know if that’s more pressure. It’s like: “Don’t screw it up now.” But all I knew is that I just had to get the camera in front of the actors and let them do what they’d been doing all along.
What makes the cast click?
DW: Unselfishness. There’s no magic. With the Broadway revival, we had 100-plus opportunities to practice with a sold-out audience every night. So you could find out what works, what doesn’t work. Sometimes we had matinees with 1 200 high school kids who were talking back, and once I remember having to stop. I just stopped in the middle of the play and just stood there and looked at the audience. And they giggled and then they started shushing each other and then they got quiet. And I was like, okay, and I picked up. So we had to deal with everything.
Do you remember seeing Fences on Broadway? If so, what are your recollections of that production?
VD: I never saw Fences when it was on Broadway in 1987. I was a poor student at Rhode Island College and I think it was just around the time I had even gotten wind of August Wilson’s existence. I was majoring in theatre then and the only playwrights that were presented to me were Arthur Miller, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams; those were the playwrights that I was immersed in.
Other than Ntozake Shange, who did For Coloured Girls, I didn’t know of any present-day produced African-American playwrights until a teacher, Elaine Perry, put Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom in my hand and she was like: “Have you heard of August Wilson?” That very day, I learned of Wilson’s existence.
Did your mother’s involvement as a civil rights activist help you in any way in your portrayal of Rose?
VD: My portrayal of Rose, my understanding of Rose, is way more simple than that. It’s marriage.
It’s making that commitment to someone in marriage and dying to yourself. Listen, I died to myself to a certain extent when I got married 13 years ago, but I’m in 2016.
Rose is in 1957. So the dying of herself is something much greater. This is someone who has totally dedicated her life to building her family. The family is her identity.
If you were to ask Rose what motivated her, what her greater need is in life, it probably would be the need to matter. And how she matters is by keeping that family together.
Solid. That is her power. That’s where her joy is supposed to be. And when that need and joy are taken away from her – those are the words that she uses – it’s way more intimate and personal than a political statement. It is a personal statement.
Translating any play to the big screen comes with a number of challenges. What’s emotive on stage doesn’t always translate cinematically. When it’s successful, however, the playwright’s work becomes more impactful.
Films like Doubt (which also starred Viola Davis) or a miniseries like Angels in America are on the short list of examples of plays expertly performed in front of the camera. Now Fences is being added to that list.
It’s an important slice of bygone Americana that comes just in a time when people’s freedom might be under threat again.
Penned by the late August Wilson, who also wrote the screenplay, Fences at its core is about the broken structures of family – and the flaws of ordinary people. Wilson famously aims his gaze on human frailty – and in Fences, Denzel Washinton as Troy Maxson is a broken man. While there are attempts to be redeemed, there’s a theme of anguish around the character – something that’s not only identifiable for the everydayman, it shows how our anxieties, successes and failures intertwine with those we share our lives with. Dig a little deeper and a lot of it is also about race, since Fences predominantly highlights the everyday world of being black in America.
Wilson told John Lahr of the New Yorker in 2001: “When you go to the dictionary and you look up ‘black,’ it gives you these definitions that say, ‘Affected by an undesirable condition.’ You start thinking something’s wrong with black. When white people say, ‘I don’t see colour,’ what they’re saying is ‘You’re affected by this undesirable condition, but I’ll pretend I don’t see that.’ And I go, ‘No, see my colour. Look at me. I’m not ashamed Cast: Denzel Washington, Viola Davis and Jovan Adepo Director: Denzel Washington Classification: 10-12 PG of who I am and what I am.”
This accurately sums up the power of Fences – it invites you to sit and feel what it is like to be a “normal black” in America. A lot of Troy’s resentment in the film is about his limited employment opportunities during the ’50s and ’60s in America, something that resonates even in 2017.
While this is all part of the undercurrent of the film, it’s really Washington’s performance as Troy and Davis’s role as the doting wife that creates a demanding and satisfying family drama.