Viola Davis recalls accidentally locking her baby in the car on a hot day: ‘I’m traumatized’

Viola Davis once accidentally locked her daughter, Genesis, in the car on a hot day, she said in an interview with Variety posted Dec. 7.

"I locked my kid in the car for about three minutes" in a Target parking lot, she said. "It was sweltering hot outside."

Davis said the incident happened "a while ago." Genesis, who was totally unharmed and blissfully unaware during the incident, is now 12. Davis shares her with husband Julius Tennon.

"I was overwhelmed," Davis, 57, said in a conversation with actress Jennifer Lawrence published by Variety. "I had 50 million things on my plate. My daughter was in the back. She’s happy, all of that. And I’m just so stressed out."

Davis said she drove to Target and parked in front of the building.

"In my brain, I'm thinking about all the things I need to do," Davis said. "I walk out of the car, shut the door, and realize I don’t have my keys."

She'd mistakenly locked them inside the car with Genesis, who remained happy and bubbly. Davis said she immediately regretted the mistake.

"I threw myself on the concrete," she described. "I screamed, you would think I was in a Greek tragedy, 'My baby! Jesus!'"

Davis said she saw two passersby and "grabbed their necks."

"I'm not kidding you, I grabbed their necks and said, 'My baby is in the car! My baby!'"

The two men calmly told her to call 911 for help, she said. She did.

"I proceeded to scream at the operator every expletive you can imagine," Davis recalled.

When authorities arrived soon after, she said, "they took her out of the car."

"It literally was seconds," she remembered. "They take her out of the car. I'm traumatized. And I do mean traumatized."

Davis said she and Genesis went into Target.

"I'm walking around Target, just mindless walking around. It's like I can't hear anything," she recalled. And she remembered Genesis "using me to get a slushy."

During her laps around the store, Davis said, she called a friend to ask "is this what being a mom is?"

Davis said the friend responded, "I'm sorry, but yeah. It is."

This article was originally published on TODAY.com