Viola Davis Gives an Emotional Speech for the Ages and Ted Danson Spreads the Love at the Golden Globes’ Inaugural Golden Gala

The room was overflowing with emotion, gratitude and appreciation Friday night as the Golden Globe Awards’ inaugural Golden Gala paid tribute to two singular and beloved stars, Ted Danson and Viola Davis.

Danson took the audience at the Beverly Hilton through his journey as an actor as he accepted the Carol Burnett Award for his contributions to television over his long career. It all started when he was given the chance to bring the indelible character of Sam Malone to life on the NBC sitcom “Cheers,” which ran 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993. The creators and executive producers of that series, brothers Glen Charles and Les Charles, were in the audience.

“Everything I have in life acting-wise comes from you all,” Danson said to the Charles brothers. “I can’t thank you enough. You’re brilliant.”

The kudo was presented by his wife of more than 30 years, actor Mary Steenburgen, who was there with many members of their extended family. And she didn’t hold back. Steenburgen noted that she fell for Danson after seeing him in commercials in the early 1980s. When “Cheers” arrived in 1982, she fell even harder for him. She figured that Danson would be a slick Hollywood type when they finally got the chance to meet.

“How wrong I was,” she said. “Slick guys don’t say ‘gosh-a-rooney’ after making love,” she said, adding quickly “I’d like to apologize to my granddaughters now.”

Steenburgen also cited Danson’s deep commitment to environmental causes and the nonprofit organization Oceana, which works to fight pollution and destruction of oceans around the world.

“Slick guys don’t spend 35 years fighting to keep the oceans of the world safe,” Steenburgen said. And in his professional life, “he has always known it’s a precious honor to take people on a journey through television,” she said.

The presentation included clips from Danson’s many TV series over the years, from CBS’ “Becker” and HBO’s “Bored to Death” to his work with Larry David on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to dramatic turns on FX’s “Damages” to NBC’s “The Good Place” and his latest effort, Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside.”

Danson called out the many writers, crew members and artisans that he has toiled with on sets over the years, from showrunners to hair and makeup pros. In closing, Danson borrowed a line from the 1993 final episode of “Cheers”: “I truly am the luckiest son of bitch on earth.”

Davis had the crowd spellbound as she was feted with the Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award. Meryl Streep, a past DeMille honoree, presented the honor with a stemwinding speech about how overwhelmed she was by Davis’ talent at the first table read of the script for the chilling 2008 drama “Doubt,” which brought Davis the first of her four Oscar nominations (she won for 2016’s “Fences”).

Davis was visibly moved by Streep’s introduction. She took the stage with tears streaming down her face.

“I feel like someone just set me on fire,” Davis said. To Streep, she declared, “You’re just a great broad. You forgot that I followed you into the toilet that first day of rehearsal. I just wanted to smell you.”

From there, Davis did what she does best. She commanded the crowd’s attention with her stentorian delivery of a speech that was shockingly raw, personal and emotionally introspective. At times, her body shook as she described the “magic” that acting has brought to her life.

“I was born into a life that just simply did not make sense,” she explained.

Here are Davis’ remarks in full:

This is my testimony. I think I decided to be an actor because acting was just a cosmic cart for a much higher journey. Finding me, finding a sense of belonging. Finding my worth.

I saw life as a big fucking fat dude. A Gordo with a big belly, eating a really greasy, moist turkey leg. When he’d get up to go the bathroom, big gold nuggets would fall out of his pockets and rain down on people. Some people got the blessings of the dripping gold. Gold just rained down on them because they worked for it. That’s how I saw life.

I was born into a life that just simply did not make sense. I didn’t fit in. I was born into abject poverty. I was mischievous. I was imaginative. I was rambunctious. But I was so poor.

Growing up in a house with alcoholism and rage, infested with rats everywhere. Toilets that never worked.

I was a bed-wetter who went to school with clothes soaked with urine. My life just didn’t make sense.
All anyone ever said was that I wasn’t pretty. By the way, what the hell is pretty? I wasn’t pretty, I wasn’t pretty. I just wanted to be somebody. I wanted some of those little gold nuggets.

What I had was magic. I was curious. I could teleport — I could take myself out of this worthless world and relieve myself of it at times.

I could go to a place where I can have belly laughs. Where I can have fun. The biggest magic was, I could see people. I could see that woman at the corner, standing there in freezing cold weather with dirty hair, really bad acne. Smoking a cigarette with bloodshot eyes. In those corduroy coats with faux fur on the inside. She’d have those pants all women buy at the Rainbow Shop, that cost $9.99 and never zipped up properly.

I’d see her standing there with dirty sneakers. Cars would come up. She’d lean in, talk to whoever was in the car, make an exchange and get in.

Nobody gave a shit about people like that. She was my Mona Lisa. She made me curious. I would enter her, take her around in there. I’d go, ‘Who are you? Who are you when you were a little girl? You were so cute. You would dream big. You thought life was going to work out for you.’

There’s always a resistance to that one memory, that one thing you live for. I could always get there. It was magic.

The seeker is the mystery. The seeker needs to know. I was curious. That’s all you need in life is curiosity. So that was acting.

That’s how I started my journey and I had enough curiosity to know that not only could I perform magic and inhabit these people, but I knew what they could give me. What could I find in all these lives that could somehow rain down those gold nuggets from Gordo and give to me and to make my life make sense.

So I started this journey of acting. Let me tell you something, not to be a contradiction but when I started off in my career I took a lot of jobs because of the money.

Sometimes for a dark-skinned, Black woman with a wide nose and big lips, that’s all there was out there. If I waited for a role that was well-crafted and written for me …

I do not believe that poverty is really the answer to your craft. I don’t think there’s any nobility in poverty. I’ve seen too many rat-infested apartments. I’ve seen too many relatives dead or dying for lack of health care. I took every job. It was an opportunity to get in there. Sometimes those gold nuggets would rain down on me. I got the Mrs. Millers and the Annalise Keatings [roles]. And I would go ‘Oh my god, I’m cooking. I’m going to be the next Meryl Streep.’

And then nothing. More often than not I got the dead characters. Like the woman standing on the street corner with the cigarette and the bad skin. The characters that are dead, that nobody cares about, that no one loves. I got them.

I believe they came to me because they knew that I would love them. I knew there was something really, really beautiful with them, where once again I could find that answer, that curiosity about why the hell am I here?

There’s no one in this room that has not answered that question – why am I here? Each of those characters gave me some level of an answer.

I would do everything I could do to bring them back together. I was a defibrillator.

Memories of my father’s death bed. Memories of falling in love. Memories of bed-wetting. Memories of belly laughs. I could fill in the blank and make them whole.

Somewhere in the whole journey of that — just like Joseph Campbell says – when you go on that hero’s journey, the final phase is always a phase you feel like you’re going to lose your life. You go to the inner-most cave. You don’t see God, you don’t see demons, you just see yourself.

And I got the elixir. That’s what acting gave me. The elixir was that it’s on me. My life is orchestrated by me. That girl who was little Viola was enough. And the mystery is not understanding Gordo with the dripping turkey leg who randomly hands out blessings.

What you gotta figure out is you. Your story. You as is — you are worthy. I had my ruby slippers.
They say the only two people you owe anything to is your 6-year-old self and your 80-year-old self. Six year old Viola, sometimes I have to rely on her to give me perspective of this moment — otherwise it’s too big for me to imagine. Going from bed-wetting, poverty and despair and wrong-ness – to this? And little Viola is squealing.

She can’t believe she married the most handsome man in the world. She can’t believe she has a daughter that has burst her heart wide open. She cannot believe that despite the fact that she smells or was mischievous or was messy and rough around the edges – she has friends who see all of that but love her. And here’s the thing – they think she’s beautiful.

So little Viola is squealing. She’s standing behind me now, she’s pulling on my dress. She’s wearing the same red rubber boots that she wore rain or shine because they made her feel pur-dy.

She’s squealing. She’s saying one thing. She says ‘Make them hear this.’ What she’s whispering is: I told you I was a magician.

(Variety parent company PMC owns Golden Globes producer Dick Clark Prods. in a joint venture with Eldridge.)