Viola Davis’s Call to Adventure

On January 25, 2009, a jubilant Meryl Streep stood before a gala crowd at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, in Los Angeles, having just won an award for her role in “Doubt,” the film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about sexual abuse, race, and the Catholic Church. Clutching her statuette, Streep gave a shout-out to the rest of the cast. When she got to Viola Davis—who had earned her first Academy Award nomination for her performance as the mother of an African-American boy a priest is accused of abusing—Streep saluted her colleague as “gigantically gifted,” then threw up her hands. “My God!” she said. “Somebody give her a movie!”