Viola Davis has shared her candid opinion on filming sex scenes — and it’s not something she enjoys.
The celebrated actor and EGOT recipient, 60, has built a career on standout performances across film and television. Her work includes her Oscar-winning turn as Rose Maxson in Fences, her role as Aibileen Clark in The Help, and her transformation into the famed blues performer in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, among many other acclaimed appearances.
On the small screen, she also became a defining presence as Annalise Keating in How to Get Away with Murder, a role that further underscored her reputation as one of the most gripping performers working today.
Still, Davis says there’s one aspect of acting she’d happily do without — and she recently explained her reasoning.
“I can’t stand love scenes,” she told Amy Poehler on her Good Hang podcast in Tuesday’s episode. “I can’t stand watching them. I can’t stand doing them.”
During How to Get Away with Murder, Davis’ character was involved in multiple intimate moments on-screen, but she said she eventually reached a point where she’d had enough.
“I finally said, ‘How to Get Away with Murder, I’m not doing any more love scenes anymore. I mean, that’s it,” she recalled.
She went on to describe the stipulation she proposed if the show wanted to continue writing those scenes — a request she framed with a specific casting preference: “unless you give me a boyfriend who has a stomach. A big gut.”
Poehler, 54, pressed for more details. “Wait. Say more.”
“You know why? Because you’ll actually write the scene. It won’t be about taking off the shirt and the six-pack abs,” Davis added.
Davis also pointed to one moment with her How to Get Away With Murder co-star Billy Brown, describing a setup where he was in his underwear with a scrub brush and was directed to “slap it on his hand as if he’s slapping my ass.”
“I’m in the scene, and I’m like, ‘You got to cut. You got to cut. Please cut,’” Davis joked, pressing her hands together as if in prayer.
She explained that, for her, shifting the focus away from a sculpted body type could naturally change what writers choose to emphasize: “So I said, ‘If you write someone with a gut, maybe we won’t be in bed. Maybe it’ll be about everything else. And then when we finally kiss, it’s like something that’s organically happening,’” she said.
And it’s not just acting in these moments that she avoids — Davis said she often skips watching them, too, when they come up in movies or shows she’s viewing. “Right now, for me, a lot of love scenes, it’s like that’s the time to go to the bathroom,” Davis joked. “If you want to pick up, go to the bathroom, you come back, you haven’t missed anything.”