You remember the movie, The Help? The one where Octavia Spencer brings a pie to one of her past employers. The excitement came from the woman eating the pie, not knowing that it was made of Spencer’s actor’s own feces, and won an Oscar for it? Octavia’s costar, Viola Davis, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Aibileen, now says she regrets making the movie and it has nothing to do with the pie.
In a New York Times interview, Viola was asked if she has ever passed up a role and regretted it. She answered the question by mentioning how she has done a role which she regretted, her role in The Help, a movie about a white woman, played by Emma Stone, writing a book about black maids.
Her reasoning behind this is because she feels that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard. She believes that the movie does not truly show what it feels like to work for white people and to raise their children in 1963 because it focuses on the white employers rather than the maids. This fact is important to her because she feels like she “knows” Aibileen and Minny because she sees her grandmother and mom in them. Even the film critic, Wesley Morris, was critical of The Help saying it was “another Hollywood movie that sees racial progress as the province of white do-gooderism”.
On the bright side, Viola said that overall her experience and the people involved in The Help were great. She said that her friendships that came from the film are ones that will last her for life and that the other actresses are “extraordinary human beings”.
The Help is certainly an entertaining movie, but next time you watch it, maybe you should consider Viola’s concerns. After all, the movie does focus more on the racist woman eating Octavia’s pie than the one who made it.