Viola Davis has never made a secret of her poor background. In fact, after winning an Oscar for her performance in “Fences” back in 2017, she revealed in the press room that she’d grown up living in a series of apartments overrun with rats (via Harper’s Bazaar). In “Finding Me,” she went into more detail about those less-than-ideal living spaces and also shared how that contributed to the way she was treated at school.
Davis was terrified of the rats in her home, so much so that if she needed the bathroom during the night, she was too afraid to run to the bathroom. That played a role in her years-long struggle with bed-wetting. What’s more, because they usually didn’t have real soap, that meant she wasn’t able to get rid of the smell. At school, that led to teachers shaming her and her older sister, and both girls being sent to the school nurse for a hygiene lesson. However, as Davis noted, the concerned adults did no digging into the home background that led to the issue in the first place.
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Teachers weren’t the only ones to remark on Davis and her siblings, though. In another heartbreaking recollection, Davis shared that the kids she went to school with refused to drink from the water fountain after her, claiming that she was unclean. Devastatingly, when Davis tried to fight back on one occasion, she was the one who was punished.
