On Feb. 5, at the 65th annual Grammy Awards, A-list actor Viola Davis achieved the rare EGOT status after being awarded her grammy becoming the 18th person and fourth Black woman to receive such status, joining other Black EGOTs like  Whoopi Goldberg, John Legend, and Jennifer Hudson.

There are many different types of awards that need to be won to be considered an EGOT. They consist of the Emmy (TV Industry), Grammy (Music Industry), Oscar (Film Industry) and the Tony (Broadway Theatre Industry)

Viola Davis won the award for the best audiobook, narration, and storytelling recording for her memoir: Finding Me, at the 2023 Grammy Awards premiere ceremony on the fifth. 

Davis’ Grammy Award win was also the first time the actress received a nomination. She beat Jamie Foxx, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Questlove, and one of the other 17 members of the EGOT club, Mel Brooks, for the award.

Published in 2022, “Finding Me” is Davis’ life story, from her childhood in Rhode Island to the stage in New York and eventually the big screen. In the description of the book, Davis writes, “I wrote this for anyone running through life untethered, desperate and clawing their way through murky memories, trying to get to some form of self-love. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be you.”

 “I wrote this book to honor the 6-year-old Viola,” Davis said at the podium. “To honor her life, her joy, her trauma, everything. And it has just been such a journey. I just EGOT!”

Davis’ Journey to this point

Viola Davis’ acting career started with her Broadway debut in a 1996 production of Seven Guitars, August Wilson’s Pulitzer-nominated play about seven Black characters living in 1948. Several years later, Davis received her most widespread attention to date with her role in the 2008 film Doubt, adapted from Scott Rudin’s Tony-winning play.

Davis’s journey to EGOT began in 2015. She won the Emmy for best lead actress in a drama for her role in the ABC series “How to Get Away with Murder” (The first African-American woman to win the Emmy for best actress in a drama series); in 2017, she won the best supporting actress Oscar for “Fences,” the Denzel Washington-directed film, written by August Wilson, based on Wilson’s 1985 play; and she’s won two Tony Awards, for “King Hedley II,” in 2001, and “Fences,” in 2010.

“I think that everybody wants their life to mean something,” she said. “I believe in the Cherokee birth blessing, which is, ‘May you live long enough to know why you were born.’ I do believe that you literally wanna blow a hole through this world in whatever way you can.”