Davis, however, made an exception after reading Kathryn Stockett's bestselling debut novel, "The Help," which Stockett's good friend Tate Taylor had signed on to write and direct. Taylor cast Davis as Aibileen Clark, a domestic servant working for a white family in Jackson, Miss. Aibileen is the heart and soul of the book and the film, and thanks to Davis' powerhouse performance, Aibileen rises above her given station in life to contribute her part to the rising civil rights movement during the 1960s. "It was a revelation to me," recalls Davis of the book. "It kind of surprised me in the most beautiful way, and for me, that's usually not been my experience when I read stories, whether they're written by white or black writers. I usually find the black characters are not humanized. You don't recognize them. You just feel like they're just functions or archetypes. But this is one case where she really put pen to paper and said, 'I really, really want to explore who these women were.' "
On finishing the novel she said to herself, "This has got to be a movie, and I've got to option it. I've got to play Aibileen. Then I found out Tate Taylor had it." As fate would have it, Taylor had Davis in mind for the role, and they had mutual friends. While Davis was starring on Broadway in "Fences" with Denzel Washington, she and Taylor met, and she was formally offered the role.
Still, Davis says, she had trepidation about playing Aibileen. Davis was well-aware that some in the black community were not fans of the book—because it was written by a white writer and it depicted black maids in the 1960s. Says Davis, "I think a lot of that criticism is coming from the perspective of people just wanting to see different stories. I can understand that. But I think that so much of it is rooted in pain from the past. I think we, as African-Americans, have a tendency to hold on to the part of history where we were wounded. And I think that there are certain images that open up those wounds. Certainly the maid—the subservient or so-called subservient maid, with an uneducated dialect and physically unattractive—certainly opens up those wounds. So I think that's where it stems from.
"But I think you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater," she continues. "And I think if you just see these women—Aibileen, Minny, Constantine, Yule Mae—as subservient maids, I think you've missed the whole point of the story. These characters are very humanized and very brave. And they absolutely represent a part of our history that is real—that is, a lot of our mothers and grandmothers were maids. They did not step into the pages of history books, and yet they played a valuable role in our lives. They laid the groundwork. And I believe those people deserve a voice just as much as Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Fannie Lou Hamer."
Tapping the Spirit
To prepare for her role, Davis poured herself into research about that chapter in history. She especially watched documentaries, noting the film "Eyes on the Prize" as one in particular. "It's like a teacher once told me: You can never have too much information about a character. Also, I started with what I feel as an actor is the bible, which is the text itself, which is the book and script [of "The Help"]. And then after that, I always feel like I need a person to focus. So I always have a vision of a person in my head, and that person was my mother and my grandmother, who when they walk into a room nobody would ever notice them—just in the most beautiful way, ordinary. I felt like I had to start with that. I had their experiences in my head, stories my mother had told me about my grandmother being a maid and herself being a maid. And everything else I just had to make up, use my imagination in terms of filling her out."
Davis shares that the most challenging aspect of playing Aibileen was "tapping into the spirit of a mother who had lost a child—who had preceded her in death, because I felt like that was her driving need." The most challenging scene for Davis was Aibileen being fired by her employer, Elizabeth Leefolt (played by Ahna O'Reilly), and having to say goodbye to Mae Mobley, the little girl she has raised and loved as her own. "Even reading the book, it was very challenging for me to read that part. That story really touched me the most," says Davis, who explains that the shooting of this long, heartbreaking scene was also difficult, as it was broken up and captured on two different days, the interior shots being filmed on one day, the exterior (depicting Aibileen walking away from the house) on another. Davis also had the challenge of trying to help a 3-year-old actor (twins Eleanor and Emma Henry) through the scene. "The constant kind of stepping out of my body to be a facilitator for her to just hit her mark and to say her lines and to look at me, and then stepping back into myself to play Aibileen, was very difficult."
What was not difficult was working with the mostly female cast that included Emma Stone, Octavia Spencer, Jessica Chastain, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Sissy Spacek. "It was one of those dream situations," says Davis. "Usually [other actors] don't want to encourage you to do your best work, because they feel it is a reflection of what they're not doing or their failure. My excellence was their excellence. It's my same experience working with Meryl Streep. She felt like her giving 150 percent during my close-up was just as important as her giving 150 percent during her close-up. Those are the kind of people you want to be creating with—total lack of ego."
After skyrocketing from relative anonymity to celebrity as a result of her 2009 Oscar nomination for her small but powerful role opposite Streep in "Doubt," Davis has felt a responsibility as an artist to inspire young actors, especially female African-American actors. "I mean, there really is a deficit," says Davis, referring to role models. "I'm really starting to get hip to the fact that it is an incredible responsibility once the baton has been passed to you." Whether producing her own projects in the future, mentoring younger generations of actors, or continuing to grow as an artist, Davis plans to not let her fame go to waste. "The best thing I can do with any kind of power I have is to create more work and to encourage."
Outtakes
Other films include "Eat Pray Love," "Knight and Day," and "State of Play"
Won Tony Awards for her work in "King Hedley II" and "Fences," both by August Wilson; earned a Tony nomination for her Broadway debut in Wilson's "Seven Guitars"
Appears in this month's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" and the upcoming "Learning to Fly"
After shooting "The Help," Davis adopted her first child, a girl, now 16 months old. On how motherhood might have affected her performance in "The Help": "Absolutely it would have been different for me if I were to play Aibileen now. It would have settled into a different place in my spirit, probably even a deeper place, because now I don't have to use my imagination."
