Matt Damon praises Viola Davis’ ‘masterful acting’ in ‘Air’: ‘That’s what Brando did, right?’
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Matt Damon hasn’t been shy about lavishing praise on his “Air” co-star Viola Davis. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, Damon said his Oscar-winning costar is “masterful” in Ben Affleck’s new drama and compared Davis’ performance to the work of Marlon Brando.
“That’s what Brando did, right?” Damon said during a group interview with Davis and Affleck after Affleck mentioned how the actress was able to be both “opaque and have the sense that there’s an enormous amount of feeling inside.”
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“It’s not doing nothing, it’s the opposite of doing nothing. You present it as if you’re doing nothing, but everything in the world is happening right underneath, and it’s awesome,” Damon said of Davis.
The 2024 Oscars race has barely started but Davis is already a formidable contender in the Best Supporting Actress field. Early reviews have praised Davis for her performance as Deloris Jordan, mother of basketball legend Michael Jordan, and both Damon and Affleck have made sure to keep a focus on their beloved costar. Speaking at the “Air” premiere at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, last month, Affleck said of Davis, “[She’s] the best actor I’ve ever seen. Honest to God, I always felt that if I was a director one day, and Viola Davis in a movie, that would really be something. That would mean the world to me. And it does.”
In an earlier interview, Damon compared Davis to Jordan himself, who is regarded as the greatest basketball player who ever lived. Having Davis in the film, Damon told Good Morning America, was like “having Michael Jordan on your basketball team.”
As Affleck has explained in numerous interviews, it was Jordan himself who requested Davis play his mother. The basketball star didn’t have any input on the project’s script – which focuses on Nike’s attempts to sign Jordan to a sneaker contract – but Affleck did discuss the movie with Jordan before production began. In the initial screenplay, Deloris was a much smaller part, but Affleck beefed up the material with an eye toward casting Davis.
Davis, an Oscar winner for “Fences” and a recently crowned EGOT, has called “Air” an “unbelievable experience” and praised Affleck as a filmmaker.
“Ben’s an auteur and so unbelievably kind and respectful. It was one of our top experiences of being treated the way we felt we deserved to be treated,” she told The Hollywood Reporter.
“Air” is out in theaters on Friday.
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