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From on-set partners to life partners, Viola Davis and Julius Tennon have built an empire of love, legacy, and groundbreaking storytelling. With G20 and a new Prime Video project on the horizon, the powerhouse couple reflects on their journey, impact, and the magic that keeps them together.
where lighting, sound, glam, and every other detail are being fine-tuned, Viola Davis and Julius Tennon are focused on no one but each other. Except for a shared joke about how diplomatically our cover shoot producer directs the crew to work efficiently or step aside, Davis is impressed with the tight ship being run. She and Tennon’s playful exchange, she explains, is exactly how they are when working together on a TV or film project.
“We laugh a lot,” says Davis. “I laugh at him; he laughs at me.” “Yeah, you country,” Tennon teases.
“We're both country,” Davis shoots back before conceding. “Look, I try to present as classy and refined, but deep down, we are real country.”
in St. Matthews, South Carolina, and she grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island, while Tennon was raised in Austin, Texas.
She’s showing a lighter, more playful side of her personality than we usually see when she’s embodying dramatic roles onscreen or reminding Hollywood how few of those roles are scripted with Black actresses in mind. That reality is why Davis was somewhat caught by surprise when Logan and Noah Miller first approached her, along with her and Tennon’s producing partner Andrew Lazar, through their production company JuVee — an amalgamation of their first names — about G20, an action-thriller in which terrorists overtake the intergovernmental forum of world leaders during a summit in Cape Town, South Africa. In 2015, long before she displayed her combat prowess in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2022 epic The Woman King, Davis was approached for the role.
“They were saying, ‘action,’ and ‘we just need a sort of badass woman,’ ‘she’s president of the United States,’ and I was like, ‘Me? You didn't bring it to someone else? Yes, I'm in.’”
Davis stars as POTUS Danielle Sutton in the Amazon MGM Studios feature set for release on Prime Video on April 10, playing an ex-war hero whose military training comes in handy when the lives of her husband (Anthony Anderson), children (Marsai Martin and Christopher Farrar), and fellow world leaders are threatened. Like Davis, Sutton is levelheaded, acutely capable, and stubborn. Her personal secret service agent (Ramón Rodríguez) constantly pleads with her to let him do his job, while Sutton repeatedly reminds him that she can hold her own.
“That was totally Julius and me, especially when we first met,” Davis admits. “We’ve got his and her baseball bats at home. His is the oldest,” the 59-year-old quips.
“I’m a man after her father’s heart,” 71-year-old Tennon responds. “Her father had his baseball bat, and I got mine.”
Before Ciara’s Prayer became the coveted battle cry of unbetrothed Black women, a single Viola Davis crafted her own intercession to God in 1999, asking for “a big Black man from the South who's probably been married before,” as she shared in Oprah + Viola: A Netflix Special Event in 2022. Three-and-a-half weeks later, Davis met the former linebacker 12 years her senior on the set of the CBS medical drama City of Angels, her first recurring role, checking off yet another item on her prayer list: “Someone who’s maybe been an actor who understands the artistic community,” she wrote.
“That’s a huge manifestation because I wasn’t even dating at the time,” Davis confesses. “No one ever even asked me out.”
to her and Tennon’s chance meeting. “I believe in magic. I believe that you do have the power to attract the desires of your heart, and I think that when you're not connected to your heart, the desires are walking into your life, and you miss them. I didn't miss Julius,” she says proudly.
Having been married twice before meeting Davis, Tennon had a simple desire when seeking out his next partner. “I just wanted a woman who loved God more than she loved herself,” he says.
However, still an up-and-comer at the time who was most known for her work on stage—Davis won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in 2001’s King Hedley II—she took a practical approach to their relationship.
Are you okay with that?’ I said, ‘Let me tell you something. We’re going to split the rent, and it’s less expensive than my rent in New York. If we break up, I’ll be alright.’”
Davis and Tennon have been splitting rent for more than 20 years now. They tied the knot on June 23, 2003, in front of 15 loved ones in their condo. Eight years later, in 2011, the couple adopted their daughter Genesis, who’s now 14. Though Davis had prayed for a man who already had kids to relieve herself of the pressure of becoming a mom, another box Tennon checked, she admits that motherhood was always something she desired—but longed for even more as her career rose.
“As my career took off, I hit that ceiling of disillusionment, going, ‘Is this it?’ People drift away; not everyone can handle your success,” she says.
Davis and Tennon became new parents around the same time they became business partners, launching JuVee Productions in 2011 just as Davis received her first Best Actress Oscar nomination for The Help.
“As Viola’s career ascended, we had to ask ourselves: How do we build on this momentum?” Tennon explains. “We realized we had to create the opportunities we wanted to see.”
JuVee’s productions have grown in tandem with Davis’s accolades. In 2023, she became the third Black woman, after Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Hudson, to achieve EGOT status. Recent projects include The Woman King and G20, both of which Tennon and Davis produced and starred in.
from such scenes—like thwarting off armed insurrectionists in an elevator shaft as she does in G20—is hard, Davis admits. “I’m not going to lie. I love it. It appeals to the six-year-old Viola who was always ready to pretend-fight.”
One ritual has kept their marriage strong: Jacuzzi date nights, which, over time, have turned into a round-the-clock activity.
“If you want to find us, we’re at the Jacuzzi,” Tennon says with an honest laugh. “I’ve had to replace the Jacuzzi motors because we use it so much.”
Up next for Tennon and Davis following G20’s release is another Prime Video project: a series adaptation of Julie C. Dao’s fantastical novel series Rise of the Empress, which also counts Gemma Chan and Forest Whitaker, via his Significant Productions company, as executive producers.
“When I was growing up, and even throughout life, when I look at other people, the worst feeling is feeling alone. I think that everyone is a little bit or a lot motivated by that just biblical feeling of feeling not seen,” says Davis. “I remember when I was just discovering that I was an actress, and I would read plays by myself at home — because I'm an introvert — I remember reading Arthur Miller. I think I was reading The Crucible, and I opened the book and the first quote from him was, ‘I write so that people can feel less alone,’ and I said, ‘you know what? That's what I want to do.’ I want to make people feel less alone. “I think that's the beauty of what we do as artists,” adds Davis. “People feel seen and if we can make people feel seen, that’s it.”
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“When we finally decided to live together, someone said, ‘He’s been married a couple of times.
However, still an up-and-comer at the time who was most known for her work on stage—Davis won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her performance in 2001’s King Hedley II—she took a practical approach to their relationship.
