Viola Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, and daughter, Genesis, star in W Magazine’s new Directors Issue

Gracing the cover of a major magazine has, perhaps, lost its novelty for many of Hollywood’s elite. It is, after all, a common experience shared amongst the who’s-who of the film and music industry. But for Viola Davis and her family, it was a chance to tell an incredibly powerful and important story.

In W Magazine’s Directors Issue, which hits stands on April 6^th, Davis and her husband, Julius Tennon, and their 10-year-old daughter, Genesis, will take readers on a visual journey titled: Black Americana: A Photo Essay on Love and Pain.

The images, artfully directed by Regina King, introduce us to a happy family enjoying a day together in the backyard of a modest, American home. “You can almost hear the sounds of DeBarge or Maze featuring Frankie Beverly — the quintessential tracklist for any Black family’s reunion, cookout, or lazy weekend afternoon,” the article reads. “The fact that the star of these photos is the Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe-winning actress Viola Davis almost doesn’t register. Instead, we see a classical portrait of Black American life.”

The images follow along with Davis and her husband as they head out for a night on the town, and then to Church the next morning. Then, once the family arrives back home, we witness Davis as she receives a devastating phone call.

In the article, Brooke Marine shares that King began crafting the story months ago “by watching old interviews of her friend Davis, in which she could hear “the pain as well as the beauty in the bruises” in her delivery.” In a conversation with Marine, King explained, “I don’t think any of us are particularly happy with the state of America, but we still embrace the fact that we are Black Americans, even with all of the things that have happened in history.”

Speaking to the inspiration for the photo essay, Davis told Marine that it was “King’s insistence on capturing Black life in its totality” that drew her to participate in this moving project. “There’s a life beyond the tragedy, there’s life even within the tragedy, and there was a life before the tragedy,” she said. “That you can be experiencing moments of joy when tragedy comes in and invades your life, and then it melts into something else—we understand that about life in general, but not always with Black folks in it. This is the first time I’ve ever done a photo shoot like this.”

The photoshoot took place in the West Adams neighbourhood of Los Angeles, with a carefully curated selection of moments shared between the three family members. Their connection, and their emotion, is palpable through the images, which were photographed by Andre D. Wagner and styled by Ruth E. Carter.

In the piece, Davis also spoke to the racial stereotypes that she has encountered during her time in Hollywood, despite the progress that has been made to fight these issues. As Davis notes, we still have a long way to go. “It becomes about reinterpreting who we are to either look better than what we are, more noble, more aesthetically beautiful in a sort of assimilationist realm, or it’s another version of Blackness that is downtrodden.”

Continuing on, Davis shares, “I feel like there is still a filter that we have to go through, and by the time you see us on-screen, we’ve become almost a Mr. Potato Head of who we actually are. You’ve got to snip out this part for white people because it’ll become an indictment. And then what’s left is a huge lie. An apologetic lie.”

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