We have to question how successful a film really is if the star actor regrets being in it entirely. The Help is one of those films.
While the movie was a blockbuster hit and seems at surface value to be a model example of black representation and black-focused narrative (at least from a non-black audience’s POV), the film’s star Viola Davis argues that it falls short on both fronts.
The Help is, at heart, a palatable version of the maids’ experience, with a white hero at its helm.
Yes, it is. And that is why Viola Davis has admitted that she actually regrets being in The Help at all.
In an interview with The New York Times, Davis explains why in spite of the filming experience being positive, The Help is on the list of roles she regrets.
“I just felt that at the end of the day that it wasn’t the voices of the maids that were heard.” Davis explains.
“I know Aibileen. I know Minny. They’re my grandma. They’re my mom. And I know that if you do a movie where the whole premise is, I want to know what it feels like to work for white people and to bring up children in 1963, I want to hear how you really feel about it. I never heard that in the course of the movie.”
The whitewashing problems that plague The Help – among many other Hollywood attempts to represent black narratives – is something Davis has been outspoken on in the past.
She has previously said that there were other scenes filmed for The Help that gave grittier, more honest depictions of the maids raging against their circumstances and white employers, but those were left out of the final cut.
The iconic scene in which Minny feeds her ex-employer a sh** pie is the only real representation of the maids’ rage, and it’s packaged comedically to make it more palatable.
Viola Davis confessing she regrets being in this movie is an important reminder of why the representation of black characters and experiences needs to ring true, and not be packaged up to make a white audience feel more comfortable.