Viola Davis just got super-real about her ‘How to Get Away With Murder’ sex life
Emmy-winner and all-around badass lady Viola Davis took the Paley Center by storm during the How to Get Away With Murder panel on Thursday. The live panel, which allows a moderator and fans to quiz actors and creators on the show, allowed the cast to reveal quite a bit, including Davis’ position on the frequently outrageous sex scenes.
When asked by Entertainment Weekly editor and panel moderator Henry Goldblatt if anything on the controversial show goes too far, Davis responded “all the sex scenes.”
“Now we know people don’t have sex like that. Nobody puts down the towel,” Davis added. “”Who gets thrown up against a wall!? I mean, I’d throw my neck out. Those scenes I feel go too far.”
The politics of television, however, mean that sometimes even a star like Davis needs to pick her battles. While she has complicated feelings about the intense sex scenes, as well as some of the stereotypical Hollywood-dictated choices about the type of women cast, she decided her efforts were better focused on another front.
According to Cosmo, Davis insisted that since she appears always in makeup, tight clothes, and other style choices that feel, to her, unrealistic, she wanted to be able to take off her wig. “I’ve got to show the world what it really means to be a woman of color, what it means to be private and public,” Davis said.
Sex scenes on television are a constant source of controversy, sometimes reflecting cultural issues with sex itself. While TV can’t really be blamed for using the titillating politics of sex to draw attention, the question of responsibility for the impact and depiction of sex remains quite up in the air across the television landscape. One thing is certain, with heat-and-click-generating issues like the gratuity of sexual violence on shows like Game of Thrones, the missing representation of LGBT sex lives on network standards like Modern Family, and concerns like those raised by Davis about the realism of fantastical sex on HTGAWM, it’s unlikely we’ll be seeing any less sex on television, realistic or not.
Related reading:
Viola Davis tells Colbert the backstory on her daughter’s awesome Halloween costume
Viola Davis’ daughter hacked her Instagram and adorableness happened
Image via ABC
