“As an audience, we look at her, we can identify with her because we see something in her which we see in ourselves,” Davis’s
Widows director
Steve McQueen said to NPR about her unmatched talent. “Now that doesn't happen with every actor — only the greats… a great actor, can translate humanity, and show us ourselves raw, bare, naked.” What Davis shows us in
The Woman King is a portrait of a warrior who is processing trauma while fighting for her kingdom’s freedom and her army’s survival. She’s holding the sisterhood of the Agojie together with sheer will, determination, and sensitive leadership. When Nawi (
The Undergound Railroad’s Thuso Mbedu delivering another star-making revelatory performance) shows up as a new Agojie recruit, cast out by her father for being too opinionated and stubborn to land a husband, Naniska is tough on her, but she is also thoughtful and caring, traits that are seemingly antithetical to a warrior of an army that severs enemies’ heads with swiftness and stakes colonizers in the heart without a second thought. “Strong for me means vulnerable,” Davis said on the red carpet, flanked by her husband Julius and her daughter, Genesis. “Strong means to be able to say you crossed a boundary with me and you hurt me and that’s not okay. Or that I can’t move mountains every day. I can’t be the great nurturer, the great giver all the time. I need someone to give to me. I think strong is a word that needs to be redefined.