Viola Davis Pays Tribute to Fences Writer at SAG Awards 2017 After Winning Best Supporting Actress in Movie

The 23rd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards aired live on TNT and TBS on Jan. 29

By Corinne Heller Jan 30, 2017 1:46 AMTags
Viola Davis, 2017 SAG Awards, WinnersKevin Winter/Getty Images

Viola Davis won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for her role in Fences Sunday.

In her acceptance speech, Davis thanked her husband, Julius Tennon and their daughter, Genesis, and gave a special shout-out to the late August Wilson, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning play Fences, on which the movie is based. He died at age 60 in 2005.

In FencesDenzel Washington plays Troy Maxson, a former Negro League baseball player who now works as a trash collector as he and his wife, played by Davis, battle racial tensions in 1950s America.  The actress first played the role in a 2010 Broadway revival of Wilson's play.

"They say that maybe all one can hope for is the right regrets and what August did so beautifully is that he honored the average man, who happened to be a man of color," Davis said. "And sometimes we don't have to shake the world and move the world and create anything that is gonna be in the history book. The fact that we breathed and live a life and was a God to our children. Just that means that we have a story and it deserves to be told." 

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SAG Awards 2017 Winners: The Complete List

"We deserve to be in the cannon of any and the center of any narrative that's written in there and that's what August did," she said. "He elevated my mother, my father, my uncles who had eighth and fifth grade educations and encapsulated them in history. So thank you, August. Thank you."

Davis beat fellow nominees Naomie Harris from MoonlightNicole Kidman from LionOctavia Spencer from Hidden Figures and Michelle Williams from Manchester by the Sea for the SAG Award.

This marks the fourth individual SAG Award win for Davis and fifth nomination. She previously won one award for her performance in the 2011 movie The Help and two for her role on the show How to Get Away with Murder.

The 23rd Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards aired live on TNT and TBS.

For complete SAG Awards coverage, watch E! News Monday, Jan. 30, at 7 p.m. and 11 p.m. And don't miss the Fashion Police 2017 SAG Awards special Monday, Jan. 30 at 8 p.m., only on E!