Viola Davis shares her 1 condition for doing love scenes: 'Maybe it'll be about everything else'
Viola Davis shares her 1 condition for doing love scenes: 'Maybe it'll be about everything else'
Mekishana PierreTue, March 17, 2026 at 5:52 PM UTC
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Viola Davis visits SiriusXM Studios on March 11, 2026Credit: Gary Gershoff/Getty
Viola Davis would rather not do another love scene again, but if she does, she has one condition of her partner: have "a stomach."
The EGOT winner shared the vision behind her mindset during an appearance on Amy Poehler's Good Hang podcast Tuesday. Davis revealed that she actually "can't stand love scenes," despite having done a fair number of them in her career. "I can't stand watching them. I can't stand doing them," the 60-year-old leading lady confessed to the laughter of Poehler and her production team.
"I finally said after How to Get Away With Murder, I'm not doing any more love scenes anymore," she declared. "I mean, that's it. You write a love scene, I'm not doing it — unless you give me a boyfriend who has a stomach."
When asked to expound, Davis emphasized that she wants a scene partner with "a big gut" because she believes that then "you'll actually have to write the scene."
"It won't be about taking off the shirt and the six-pack abs," she explained. She went on to recall filming a love scene on HTGAWM with costar Billy Brown, a common practice since her character, Annalise Keating, "sleeps with a lot of people."
"I'm lying down and everything, and then he gets up with his underwear, and they're literally just taking his underwear down, putting his makeup on," she said, referring to the film crew. "And he's got his abs. And then they want him to walk into the bathroom and come out with one of those scrub brushes and slap it on his hand as if he's slapping my a--. It's a freaking nightmare."
Billy Brown and Viola Davis on 'How to Get Away With Murder'Credit: Mitch Haaseth/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty
After six years of leading the Shonda Rhimes series, Davis said she'd formed her condition with the hopes that writers would pay more attention to the situation than the optics. "So I said, 'If you write someone with a gut, maybe we won't be in bed. Maybe it'll be about everything else,'" she posed. "And then when we finally kiss, it's like something that's organically happening."
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But that doesn't change her mind about love scenes in general. "A lot of love scenes, it's like, that's the time to go to the bathroom," Davis, who's been married to actor Julius Tennon since 2003, quipped.
Davis has never shied away from sharing her opinion on love scenes, especially during her time on HTGAWM. During a 2016 appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, she claimed that she told writers she didn't want any more love scenes for Annalise.
"They threw me up against the wall in the first season and I threw my back out for two weeks — and my hip!" Davis said at the time. "So I limped around for two weeks and I said, 'No more walls.'"
The G20 star said she only agreed to more love scenes if they were much more tame. "I just want to be on a bed and I don't want to move," she said, laughing. "I don't want anyone on top of me and I don't want to be on top of anyone else."
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Watch Davis discuss her distaste for love scenes above.
on Entertainment Weekly
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
