While Viola Davis has many accolades, nothing can compare to the approval from her daughter.
On Monday, April 7, the G20 actress, 59, made an appearance on Good Morning America to promote her upcoming action film, out on Amazon Prime Video on Thursday, April 10. While speaking with co-anchor Michael Strahan, Davis opened up about how her 14-year-old daughter Genesis’ reaction made her feel, describing it as “everything” to her.
“She was so excited. She kept saying, ‘Oh my goodness. Mom, Mom, you’re golden, mama. You’re golden!’ And she cried. She laughed,” she told the former professional football player, 53. “I loved being the hero to my teenage daughter. Because usually in these teenage years, you just disappear. They become zombies, and you become anything other than a hero.”
“Her sitting there watching me like that… It just, yeah. It was everything,” she added.
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The How to Get Away with Murder star became a mother in July 2010, sharing her daughter with her husband Julius Tennon. Despite starring in many award-winning films and TV shows and living an “extraordinary life,” the EGOT winner knew something was missing.
“It was great, but it was not fulfilling,” Davis told PEOPLE in 2017 of stardom before welcoming her daughter. “I wanted my life to mean and be something deeper. That’s when the urge came, and the urge was just very, very, very, strong. So I have a kid now, and she is just the light of our lives.”
Being a parent gave Davis “a whole new purpose,” but she still isn’t the standard PTA mom. “I don’t make the brownies,” she said. “I’m not the brownie-making mother.” The Women King actress instead provides lots of love, support and encouragement for Genesis to be her truest self.
“I encourage her to use any source of expression, whether it’s TikTok, painting, taking pictures,” she told PEOPLE in 2020. “I said, ‘Anything about yourself, even the things that you don’t think people will love about you, all of it makes up your beauty.’ I don’t want her to grow up with any shame.”
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In April 2024, as her teenage daughter was beginning to move into teenage years, the Fences star shared with PEOPLE the greatest piece of advice she gave to her daughter.
“What I tell my daughter right now is, ‘Genesis, you are the love of your life,’ ” Davis told PEOPLE in an interview for the magazine’s 50th anniversary special issue. “You have to start right now to have a radical love affair with yourself, to be in touch with your inner voice, what you like, what you don’t like, what’s crossing the boundaries, and you honor that. And through that, that is the seed where everything grows.”
“No one ever told me that. No one ever told me that I was the love of my life. I just counted myself out,” she continued. “If I have to be small in order to build up a relationship, I’ll make myself small. If I have to sacrifice my needs for others — that’s a big one for women, we are considered stronger when we sacrifice our needs. I said, ‘Genesis, no, do not do that. You are the love of your life, you and you alone.'”
