In Ma Raineys Black Bottom, Viola Davis looks unlike any character weve ever seen her play. With thick makeup, gold teeth, heavy body pads and a period-accurate horsehair wig (which the actor says was unbelievably hot under the set lights), Davis embodies the famous titular blues singer, who was one of the most successful women in music recording in the 1920s.

When actors push and contort their physical appearance to unrecognizable limits, they often become favorites of the annual awards-season buzz machine. Prosthetics, heavy makeup (or no makeup at all), drastic weight gain or weight loss, and wigs all aid in this allure. If the sign of a great actor is their ability to disappear into a role, then these physical transformations, especially of actors whom we think of as glamorous (Halle Berry in Monsters Ball, Charlize Theron in Monster), offer up a way to easily ascertain whether a performance is indeed good or bad.

But the quality of Davis performance goes far beyond appearances. Indeed, the physicality of the role that is, her very presence on screen is the driving force of this film adaptation of August Wilsons play. In a movie that takes place mostly in two or three different rooms, Davis sweeps into scenes like a hurricane of singularity. Her costume and makeup is not the performance, but rather an extension of a fully realized entity a woman who is funny, wistful, brash, opinionated, clever, girlish, motherly, fierce, wounded and free, all at once.

At this point, its absolutely no surprise when Davis is great in a role; greatness has become her calling card . Whats activating about her performance in Ma Raineys Black Bottom isnt simply that its good, but that its exciting.

In this interview, Davis talks about creating the look and feel of Ma Rainey, her doubts and fears about taking the role, and the worth of Black women.

I wanted to talk about the physicality of the role not just the makeup and the teeth and the clothes, etc. but how you got to the place of having the presence of Ma Rainey. And whether those things, the teeth and the hair and everything, helped?

Yeah, it does. For me, the physicality was probably the most important choice, because I feel that people have an idea of what a big Black woman walks like. And in my world, the big women or the so-called big women are highly sexual. You cannot tell them what clothes they cant wear. You cannot tell them to cover their cleavage. They have a whole different relationship with their bodies than is oftentimes seen on screen. Theyre my aunt Joyce. My aunt Joyce was other than my mom, my mom was the first but my aunt Joyce was the first beautiful woman I saw. And she must have been close to 300 pounds. But every time she had the most fashionable clothes, she would switch her hips. And so thats how I found the physicality. I wasnt working against the size, I was working with it. I was embodying it, because thats who she is. When she walks into a room, everything stops. So that had to go into her physicality. I did not want her to be apologetic with it.

Right.

I even told someone that I walked better in heels as Ma than I do as Viola. [laughs] I walk terrible in heels. And the part of me that it brought out with all of it, with the gold teeth because they say that she had a mouth full of gold teeth having makeup on that looked caked, and baby-doll eyelashes, and her makeup under the lights in the tent looked like greasepaint that was just melting off of her face, and all of that. What happened with all of that was that I found it freeing.

All of those things, in my mind, can or would feel constricting, or I feel like there would be an over-awareness of them. When you were playing the role, how are you able to sort of let go of the physical reality of this character and embody everything that those physicalities represented?

Well, I find as an actor, if all those things are in place, but they have nothing to do with the character, it probably does weigh you down more.

But because its a part of the character, its freeing, its illuminating, because then you have to deal with it. And then dealing with it, its not a weight weighing down, its dealing with there are gold teeth in your mouth. If youre playing a character with braces, you got to deal with the braces. And the big thing is, does it affect your voice? Maybe it does, but shes got gold teeth in her mouth. Are the wigs hot? Are all those things hot? Yes. But the oppressiveness of the heat does help with the character. Cause it can weigh you down. Heat does weigh you down, the sweat can weigh you down. But it makes me really want that damn Coca-Cola. It really does piss me off when Irvin [Mas manager, played by Jeremy Shamos] is not doing what he needs to do. So it informs your behavior, rather than weighs you down, because its a part of who you are.

If you had to play a character that had physical challenges, then its not a weighing down, its learning how to work within that. So its the same thing with everything. And even the padding had weight to it.

How involved were you with that process of putting on this physicality?

Well, when you start a movie, you do the fitting of the dresses. You do the fitting of the wigs, you do the makeup or whatever. And then, absolutely, you give your opinion. With me, whatever works with me this is just an opinion is whatever is really honest and authentic. So the wigs back in that day were made of horsehair. That means they are heavy. They are really thick and theyre hot. So when I put that on, Viola began to slowly disappear. And then at first the makeup was really, really pretty, but thats not how its written in anything that you read about what people say about Ma Rainey. The makeup was not pretty until she did it herself. See, pretty makeup is just for the audience to feel comfortable.

Right, its more palatable.

Exactly. If you were doing your makeup, and its that heavy-duty makeup from 1927, that is thick greasepaint. What is it going to look like? And then youre under the lights; shes known for doing coon-face shows. Now, as insulting as people may think that is, that was the only entertainment available to Black people, that and Chitlin Circuit shows. So you would go there, dressed in white caked-up makeup, and do all these minstrel, funny things to make the audience laugh. And thats what her and her first husband, or her only husband, was known for Pa Rainey for these coon-face shows. That thick makeup. So we messed up the makeup after the first makeup session. And then that with the sweat, because shes known to sweat all the time. She was always sweating. Im going to be honest with you, here was my fear. My fear is when people look at a Ma Rainey and they just want her to be big, fat, Black and funny.

And not see the duality or complexity in her.

Yes. That wouldve sent me to an early grave. I wanted to be her. I wanted to honor her. All of her complexity. Im not saying that theres not moments where she didnt say anything that was funny because she was just being art in the same way all people can be funny, but they dont even mean to be? But there was much more to her. You know, that I didnt want to play the archetype. And so all of those specific choices helped me to not do that.

Was there any part of you that felt daunted in playing, not only this real life person, but also this character in a very iconic play?

Every single role I have, I have that. It follows me. It was a huge fear in failure. Even though its such a huge part of life. Even though, even if you get accolades, you still sort of feel this burning thing inside of you that says, I could have done it better. But what youre also armed with as an actor I know I have it, I know Chadwick had it and Colman [Domingo], Michael Potts and Glynn Turman and Dusan Brown and Taylour Paige, all of us, Jeremy Shamos, Jonny [Coyne] is courage. And thats the courage and the bravery to just step out on faith and make bold choices. And let me tell you something, when you have a great writer, he does 90% of the work for you. Because its harder to do bad work. [laughs] Let me just tell you, its harder to do bad work. And so I knew that there was no place to go, but just to leap.

And go for it.

And go for it.

I think this is one of the most exciting performances Ive seen this year. I feel like your performance and Chadwick Bosemans performance form the yin and yang in the film. Chadwick Bosemans character [Levee] is someone who is striving to get to a place that Ma Rainey is at, but then were also seeing not only what it takes for her to get to that place, but also maintain it. Can you talk a little bit about that juxtaposition between your two characters and those two performances?

Yes, I can only because I know August Wilson, so I can answer this. He always has two characters that represent the material world and the spiritual world. Always. Berniece and Boy Willie in Piano Lesson. You know, Bynum and Herald Loomis in Joe Turners Come and Gone, where one characters answer is, Get as much money as you can to show these white people how you live and, you know, just, you know, hit it big, you know, dreams and all of that. And then theres the other side of Bynum, who is like, You have to know who you are in the world. You have to explore who you are. You have to love God and blah, blah, blah. And I would say that Levee probably represents more of the physical world.

Right.

His value is in his shoes. His value is in his music. He doesnt understand how the past, and that trauma, and not dealing with it, is going to be the source of what brings him down. Now Ma, on the other hand, Ma listens to her heart, Ma listens to the voice inside of her. Thats all that counts with Ma. Cause I dont like it up here, no ways. I can go back down South. Ma is telling the truth of whats in her soul. OK. And listen, I know that this music is the music of the future, whatever, but I dont want to do that.

I want to do what I want right now. Or Im going to go back and live with my mom in Columbus, Georgia. So its always that tug and pull as to what are the answers to release us as Black people? Its W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, right? So, thats what exists in all of Augusts plays. And in the end, its like, who wins out? Is it the material or the spiritual world?

And whats the true sort of path to freedom? Because something about Ma Raineys character that I really came away with is that she represents pure freedom. This is someone who is determined to be free no matter who is trying to dictate what that looks like for her. Whats your main hope for people to take away from this performance and from this movie and from the story?

Im terrible at that, because I think people are going to take away whatever theyre going to take away from it. But if I were to dictate it, I would want them to understand the extent to which we, as Black people, have to go in order to get our value and our worth. How hard we have to fight. And in the end, what it cost us. Thats what I would want them to get. Because we are not the leftovers... Thats what I would want them to get from it, because thats my big pet peeve that always, you know I, me and every person of color, especially Black women, were worthy. Were worthy.

Ma Raineys Black Bottom streams on Netflix on Friday.