Nora Jean's Nattering

In a recent interview with Tavis Smiley, Ms. Davis and her co-star Octavia Spencer responded to Mr. Smiley’s qualms about their Oscar-nominated turns playing domestic workers. He referred to Hattie McDaniel’s Oscar victory, the first for an African-American actress, for playing a maid in “Gone With the Wind” and wondered why filmmakers or audiences can’t get past that image. (In the opinion pages this weekend, Brent Staples noted that advertising got there long before the dramatic arts.)

“I want you to win,” Mr. Smiley said, “but I’m ambivalent about what you’re winning for.”

Ms. Davis was direct. “That very mind-set that you have and that a lot of African-Americans have is absolutely destroying the black artist,” she said.

“The black artist cannot live in a revisionist place,” she added. “The black artist can only tell the truth about humanity, and humanity is messy. People are messy. Caucasian actors know that.”

Ms. Spencer pointed out that Anthony Hopkins won for playing a cannibal and Charlize Theron for portraying a serial killer — that white actors were never taken to task for their choices in playing troubling roles. “I don’t have a problem with nominating these two earnest, hard-working women,” Ms. Spencer said of “The Help” characters. “We’ve never seen this story told from their perspective.”

Ms. Davis worried that the focus on representation in African-American roles robbed them of their ability to be relatable.

“We as African-American artists are more concerned with image and message and not execution,” she said, “which is why every time you see your images they’ve been watered down to the point where they are not realistic at all.”

“My whole thing is, do I always have be noble?” she continued. “As an artist, you’ve got to see the mess.”