She Got The EGOT! Viola Davis Has Now Won Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, And Tony Awards

Viola Davis has officially joined the EGOT club! 

At the 2023 Grammy Awards on Sunday, February 5, Davis won in the category of Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording for her memoir "Finding Me." This means she has now won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and two Tony awards — making her one of the few actresses to receive honors in all four major awards. In total, she is only the 18th person ever to earn the EGOT status. 

Davis has tackled many meaty roles over the years. Most recently, she starred in the critically-acclaimed historical drama "The Woman King" as General Nanisca, delivering a performance that received near-universal praise. Her mainstream breakout role was as the troubled mother Mrs. Miller in "Doubt." She turned heads again just a few years later as Aibileen Clark in the Academy Award-winning film "The Help," and then became a household name thanks to her Emmy-winning performance as lawyer Annalise Keating in the drama series "How to Get Away with Murder." Although Davis has had a lengthy career in television, appearing in many recurring roles over the last three decades, her stint as Annalise Keating was particularly unforgettable. 

Before her film and television success, Davis made a name for herself in the theater. After her first nomination in 1996 for "Seven Guitars," Davis won a Tony for her performance in the 2001 play "King Hedley II," in which she played Tonya, the wife of the titular ex-con. She would win a second Tony within the decade: scoring Best Leading Actress in a Play for "Fences" in 2010. All three plays were written by August Wilson.

"Fences" would prove her most important role to date: after being nominated twice and losing, Davis finally won an Oscar for reprisal her role in the "Fences" film adaptation in 2016. Just a few years later, she was nominated again for starring in "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" — another Wilson adaptation. She has received four Oscar nominations total, being the first Black woman to do so.

In a January interview, Davis said "The Grammy nomination and how the book has done have been truly a gift that I didn't expect," adding,

"I feel this way, even though it's probably a very dramatic statement on my part: I think that everybody wants their life to mean something. I believe in the Cherokee birth blessing, which is 'May you live long enough to know why you were born.' I do believe that you literally wanna blow a hole through this world in whatever way you can."