With her indelible turn as blues legend Ma Rainey in George C. Wolfe’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Viola Davishit a high note and shattered an Oscars record. With the fourth nod of her career, she became the most-nominated Black actress in Academy history.

Initially, Davis resisted the role of Ma Rainey: “I just didn’t see myself,” she says. But Wolfe and producer Denzel Washington (who directed and starred opposite Davis in 2016’s Fences, for which she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress) believed in her.