Viola Davis, Taraji P. Henson, Julia Louis Dreyfus talk women in TV for annual ELLE issue: 'If you are anywhere above a size 2, you're not having sex'

As far as television is concerned, women of a certain size or age might as well not even have a vagina.

 

That's how Emmy award-winning actress Viola Davis sees it, telling Elle magazine that TV has grossly misrepresented female sexuality for years.

"If you are anywhere above a size 2, you're not having sex," Davis told the magazine. "You don't have sexual thoughts. You may not even have a vagina. And if you're of a certain age, you're off the table."

It’s because TV "lies about women," added the 50-year-old Davis, who was one of five TV stars on alternative “Women in TV” issue covers.

 

Other cover stars were Taraji P. Henson of “Empire,” Priyanka Chopra (“Quantico”), Julia Louis-Dreyfus (“Veep”) and Olivia Wilde (the forthcoming “Vinyl”).

Each leading lady delved into her own grievance against Hollywood. For Louis-Dreyfus, the issue is the paucity of substantive roles in movies.

"Go to the movies — how many good scripts are you really seeing out there?" she asked. “Not tons of them."

Henson says Hollywood makes it harder for a black character to be taken seriously — something she battles every day as Cookie Lyon on “Empire.

"It was very important to me that she not be sassy and neck-rollin' and eye-bulgin' and attitude all the time," said Henson, who just took home the Golden Globe for best actress in a drama series. "Everything she does is coming from a place of fighting for her family. That's why she's not a caricature."

Elle hits newsstands on Jan. 19.