The Help

Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, and Jessica Chastain really do elevate this movie into something more that it would (or should) be, bringing emotion and humanism beyond the cliches. Good melodrama. I just changed my Oscar prediction for one category.

From the Fresh Air interview: Some blogs called Davis a sellout for taking the sort of role that was once the only kind black actresses could get. Tulane University Professor Melissa Harris-Perry told MSNBC that "what killed me was that in 2011, Viola Davis was reduced to playing a maid."

Even Tate Taylor, the film's director, has said that "the role of Aibileen, in the hands of the wrong actress, could turn into a cliche."

Davis tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that she absolutely didn't see Aibileen as a character she was reduced to playing — much less a cliche.

"Or else I wouldn't have done it," she says. "You're only reduced to a cliche if you don't humanize a character. A character can't be a stereotype based on the character's occupation."

Davis says she has played one-dimensional characters in the past, but she makes clear that Aibileen — a 53-year-old maid with a sixth-grade education — doesn't fall into that category in her eyes.

"I saw her going on a journey," she says. "I saw her having humor and heart and intelligence. I saw her as having duality. And that's what I look for above anything else. Because usually, that is what's missing."