Viola Davis looks like a true badass in The Woman King and reveals what it took to make the transformation happen. The Oscar-winning actress plays General Nanisca, the leader of the all-female military team who protect the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, and she’s not taking the role lightly.
In an interview with Vanity Fair, Davis revealed how rigorous her training was to prepare for the demanding role.
“We started intensely a few months before shooting—four hours a day, five days a week. Weight training, sprinting, martial arts, and weaponry training for the machete. I like to say that I was the O.G. warrior.”
The Kingdom of Dahomey existed in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, and today it’s known as the Republic of Benin. The movie follows Nanisca and her fellow warrior women, called the Agojie, as an ambitious new recruit, Nawi (Thuso Mbedu), joins their ranks. They will have to fight for their lives as they protect themselves against enemies who have violated their honor, enslaved their people, and destroyed their land.
Davis has played many iconic roles over the years, including Annalise Keating in the ABC drama How To Get Away With Murder, and Rose Maxson in Fences. While she has starred in the action-packed DC movie The Suicide Squad as the fearsome director of A.R.G.U.S. Amanda Waller, she was more of a puppet-master than someone who got her hands dirty. This all changes with The Woman King.
She shared that she knew very little about the Agojie were before coming onto this project, and detailed how their history was skewed by the writers of history.
“The only thing I knew, literally, was that there were women somewhere in Africa that were called Amazons. There is one book, The Amazons of the Black Sparta — written by a white man. I had to cross out a lot of it because it was full of editorial comments like, ‘They looked like beasts. They were ugly. They were mannish.’ You had to sift through all of that.”
The film will also include Star Wars sequel trilogy star John Boyega, who will be playing King Ghezo. The character is described as someone who walks as if the earth were honored by its burden, and it will undoubtedly bring yet another inspired performance from Boyega.
Old Guard director Gina Prince-Bythewood will helm the project, and has co-written it with City of Angels screenwriter Dana Stevens. The Woman King comes to theaters Sept. 16.