▶ Watch Video: Oprah selects Viola Davis as next author in book club
Viola Davis’ new memoir “Finding Me” was announced on “CBS Mornings” to be the 95th Oprah’s Book Club pick.
Oprah told “CBS Mornings” co-host Gayle King that she was instantly drawn into Davis’ book.
“I have to tell you that I read the first sentence and then the first paragraph, and I knew that this was going to be a Book Club,” Winfrey said.
Davis said she “flipped out” when she heard the news of her book selection. “Finding Me” explores Davis’ rise to fame, going into detail about her upbringing in Rhode Island to breaking into acting in New York City.
Davis digs deep in her book, exploring how she’s dealt with poverty, bullies, race, sexism, and the impossible beauty standard that plagues Hollywood.
“Beauty is attached to a value. And if you don’t have it, you have nothing. Once I got older into my 40s, I started asking a really, really important question, which is, ‘Why?’ Who said I’m not beautiful? And then something happened within all of that. This little flicker, this little voice that said, ‘I have the power to reject that. That is an opinion. That is not the truth,'” she told Winfrey and King.
In “Finding Me,” Davis goes into detail about how the character of law professor Annalise Keating in the ABC drama, “How to Get Away With Murder,” changed her life.
Davis said that it means “everything” to her that so many young Black girls look up to her the way Davis looked up to one of her idols, Cicely Tyson.
“I’ve given them permission to see themselves as a thing of beauty, as a thing of possibilities. Absolutely, it gives me a different kind of joy than I get from even my Oscar, my Emmy, and all of those other awards and accomplishments,” she said.
This is Davis’ first memoir and she said she is “apprehensive” but ready for any criticism that might come.
“I’m apprehensive of the criticism. I’m apprehensive about how it’s going to affect my family. I’m apprehensive. But here’s my thing: I don’t think that there’s living without risks. I don’t. I think if you risk not, you live not,” said Davis.
“Finding Me: A Memoir” will be released online and in bookstores on April 26, 2022.