On Thelma & Louise, competitive archery and the irrefutable truth of data — GEENA DAVIS.
In May 1991, Thelma & Louise premiered, closing the Cannes Film Festival. A crime-drama buddy movie that controversially put two women in the lead roles, it would go on to earn both Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon nominations for best actress at the following year’s Oscars. “It was a small movie, but it exploded,” Geena says now, a touch of awe in that husky voice. “The reaction to that movie was so unlike anything I had experienced.”
Geena Davis: ‘Thelma & Louise changed everything for me’
It was the moment she realised how few inspiring women there are on screen. Now the actor is on a mission to fix that
Decca Aitkenhead
Saturday 25 March 2017
Somewhere in a parallel universe, Geena Davis is having the time of her life. “Yes! Enjoying this new era in American history!” As one of the few women to have played a US president on screen, in her parallel universe Davis is having a lovely conversation with me about how fabulous it feels to see a woman finally make it to the White House.
This isn’t the first time the actor has found her presidential fantasies preferable to reality. Eleven years ago, she was President Mackenzie Allen on the TV show Commander In Chief. “It had been the number one new show, and it was going to run for eight years. I was going to do two terms,” Davis grins ruefully. She won a Golden Globe for the role. Then internal studio politics intervened and the show was cancelled after a single season. “For a long time after, I felt like, in an alternate universe, I was still on that show. In my mind,” she says, laughing, “I wanted to set up the Oval Office in my garage and pretend I was still the president.”
Davis hoots at her own absurdity, but for the record she did receive a fairly presidential greeting on arrival at the restaurant where we meet. The Polo Lounge at the Beverly Hills hotel is a fantastically kitsch extravaganza of salmon-pink table linen and bad taste, but a Hollywood institution nonetheless. While I waited, the lunch tables filled with industry types, and my requests for a quieter corner were defeated by the expert indifference of waiters who understand the rules of Hollywood hierarchy better than I do. But the instant Davis arrived, the maître d’ descended into an obsequious froth – “Miss Davis! Welcome back!” – and whisked us off to a coveted booth.
“So good to see you again!” he purrs, before blanching in horror. Davis has a white napkin on her lap, but her trousers are black. Quelle horreur! The offending item is whipped away and replaced with a black one, while Davis tries not to giggle.
Davis has no publicist in tow, and nothing about her outfit would suggest celebrity: she is wearing a loose white T-shirt and the sort of plain and comfortable black jacket and trousers one might put on for Sunday lunch in a nice pub. Were she not so tall (6ft), I might easily have missed her when she arrived, full of apologies for being all of 10 minutes late. I take the maître d’s instantaneous excitement to mean she must be a regular, but as soon as he’s gone, she whispers, “No! I can’t even remember the last time I was here. It’s this very weird phenomenon. If I go to hotels, they always say, ‘Welcome back’, even when I’ve never been there before.” That must be rather disorienting. “Yes, weird!” She nods cheerfully. “You have all these people saying nice things to you, and it can really be like, ‘Wow, I’m very fortunate, aren’t I?’ I’m very, very grateful for it, you know?”
