July 15, 2020

Viola Davis For Vanity Fair July/August 2020

Viola Davis For Vanity Fair

I felt a chill down my spine while looking at how radiant Viola Davis looked on the cover of Vanity Fair’s July/August 2020 edition shot by Dario Calmese and styled by Elizabeth Stewart.

This cover has made history as Dario is the first Black photographer to shoot a cover for Vanity Fair.  I have to say I was shocked by this fact.

It appears that she is wearing this Max Mara Pre-Fall 2020 taffeta backless  gown, but it’s actually a coat.

In the issue the Oscar, Emmy and Tony-winning actress discusses police brutality protests, the fight for equal pay as a Black thespian and much more.

The actress, who turns 55 next month, has been vocal about the importance of equal pay for Black actors, famously (and excellently) stating during a Women in the World event in 2018 “People say, ‘You’re a Black Meryl Streep…OK, then if there is no one like me, if you think I’m that, you pay me what I’m worth.”

She doubles down on that statement during her Vanity Fair interview, adding that addressing every issue of systemic racism in this country would take forever.

“Should I say it? Should I not? What’s a good hashtag?” she says.

“Is there going to be some kind of silent backlash, where I just stop getting phone calls? Stop getting jobs?”

She also points out Vanity Fair’s issues with inclusion, which the writer Sonia Saraiya agrees with.

“There’s a real absence of dark-skinned Black women. When you couple that with what’s going on in our culture, and how they treat Black women, you have a double whammy. You are putting us in a complete cloak of invisibility,” Viola said.

I’m speechless.

Credit: Vanity Fair/Dario Calmese

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