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    Home » Viola Davis Spurs On Diversity, Inclusion Via JuVee Productions

    Viola Davis Spurs On Diversity, Inclusion Via JuVee Productions

    By SHOOTMonday, June 24, 2019Updated:Tuesday, May 14, 2024No Comments3443 Views
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    This June 12, 2019 file photo shows Viola Davis speaking at the Women in Film Annual Gala in Beverly Hills, Calif. Davis believes in equality across the board and calls her JuVee Productions a “walking metaphor” of inclusion. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

    By John Carucci

    NEW YORK (AP) --

    When Viola Davis started her production company nearly a decade ago, she was determined to bring about change in Hollywood with a strategic mandate: Normalize people of color on screen.

    "We're not social statements. We're not mythical creatures all the time … you can literally put pen to paper and write a great story that includes people of color, and it could actually sell," the Oscar winner said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

    Now, in the era of Time's Up and #MeToo, the call for diversity on all levels has been amplified. Some actors and directors have publicly called for 50-50 inclusion riders, contractual stipulations for the diversity of a film's cast and crew. But Davis says she doesn't need a piece of paper to do the right thing, and her projects don't try to replicate diversity simply based on statistics.

    "Maybe that's narcissistic of me, but I don't want to tell my daughter that because she's 12 percent of the population, she only deserves 12 percent of the pie," Davis said.

    She calls her JuVee Productions a "walking metaphor" of inclusion, noting that she has people of color and members of the LGBTQ community on staff at every level.

    "Women are at the forefront of just about every project," she adds.

    She started JuVee Productions with her husband, Julius Tennon, in 2011 so she could have more of a voice in her own career, as well as provide more diversity on set. Before that, Davis says, she often felt left out of the conversation.

    Davis spoke to the AP while promoting a documentary on diabetes, "A Touch of Sugar." The actress, who has an early form of the disease and has lost family members to it, wants to use her celebrity to help raise awareness.

    "That's what I can do. I'm not a politician. I'm not a senator. I'm not in the House of Representatives. I'm not in Congress. What I am is an artist. That's how I provoke change," Davis said.

    Earlier this month, she signed on to Netflix's adaptation of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," to be produced by Denzel Washington and co-starring Chadwick Boseman.

    And JuVee has a slate of films on the horizon, including "Emanuel," a documentary released this month that explores life in a Charleston, South Carolina, community after a self-avowed white supremacist killed nine African Americans at a church there in 2015. The story focuses on the victims' family members, friends and community, and their efforts to heal through faith and forgiveness after the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Church. Dylann Roof was convicted of federal hate-crime and obstruction-of-religion charges and sentenced to death.

    Davis also has a feature film in development, "The Personal History of Rachel Dupree," in which she stars. It is based on the Ann Weisgarber novel about a pregnant woman struggling to survive with her homesteading family in the early 1900s.

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    Category:News
    Tags:JuVee ProductionsViola Davis



    Review: Filmmaker Lynne Ramsay’s “Die, My Love” Starring Jennifer Lawrence

    Thursday, November 6, 2025

    A primal punk spirit rages through Lynne Ramsay's "Die, My Love," a jagged, go-for-broke psychodrama starring Jennifer Lawrence as an increasingly unhinged new mother and Robert Pattinson as her husband. In this cauldron of marital nightmare, set in a ramshackle rural Montana home, there are fires, real and imagined, and a variety of wildlife. There's an incessantly yapping dog, brought home by Jackson (Pattinson) shortly after the couple move in from New York. There's a horse in the road, inopportunely. And on the shirt on Grace (Lawrence) is a tiger. But, more than these animalistic flourishes, there is Grace, herself. In a moment early in the film, she prowls on all fours through tall grass, with a knife in her hand. The shorthand description of Ramsay's film, adapted from a 2012 novel by the Argentine writer Ariana Harwicz, is that it's about a woman with postpartum depression. But that's not quite right. It's more about the power and urges of a woman who, like a beautiful, feral creature, is not taking to domestication. That's the appealing through line of "Die, My Love," though it can be difficult to firmly grasp it in Ramsay's piercing but tediously overamplified character study. Still, as unkempt and overwrought as "Die, My Love" is, it's not a movie that's timidly weighing in on parenting and gender roles. There's plenty to admire in Ramsay's uncompromising and delirious portrait of marital hell, particularly in the bracingly raw performance of Lawrence. The abandon with which she throws herself into the role is enough to make you exclaim "Mother!" Grace and Jackson have moved near his childhood home. Their house belonged to Jackson's uncle before he killed himself. Jackson's parents (Nick Nolte, Sissy Spacek) live nearby, and Spacek's knowing... Read More

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