“Coachella!” exclaimed Geena Davis, cradling her head on the table in front of her. When she straightened up, her face was flush with a wide-eyed glow: “Oh my God!”
The veteran actor was still reeling from the electric response to her cameo appearance a few weeks earlier during headliner Sabrina Carpenter’s second weekend set at the popular music festival.
The young audience roared when they spotted Davis on mammoth screens sitting in a drive-in, playing an older version of Carpenter in a skit that also paid homage to her 1991 female outlaw saga “Thelma & Louise.”
“The reaction really blew my mind,” Davis said. “I didn’t expect to suddenly be trending!”
Her smile widened as she segued into raving about her latest project, Netflix’s “The Boroughs,” about a group of residents of an upscale retirement community who band together when a mysterious entity starts killing off their neighbors.
The series features Davis as Renee, a volunteer at the community center who is itching for combat. “I wanna kick some ass, stack some bodies,” she declares at one point. “The gray rebellion rises.”
“It’s such a special project, so well-written,” she said. “And I just love the ensemble,” which includes fellow veteran actors Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Clarke Peters and Bill Pullman.
In quieter moments, Renee strikes up a romance with Paz (Carlos Miranda), a law enforcement officer who is smitten with the much older Renee.
During a recent interview at Netflix’s Hollywood complex, the 70-year-old Davis was loose and vibrant, spilling out colorful anecdotes and celebrating what appears to be a fresh and exciting moment. A suggestion that “The Boroughs” and the Coachella drive-by could be an early signal of a “Davis-sance” prompted a quick correction.
“It’s a Geena-sance,” she said, adding quickly, “Although I guess Davis-sance is good as well.”
“The Boroughs” introduces the newest member of Davis’ gallery of strong and fierce females who have characterized her career.
Her breakthrough as a soap opera actor in the acclaimed 1982 comedy “Tootsie,” followed by her Oscar-winning portrayal of a quirky dog trainer in 1988’s “The Accidental Tourist,” a smorgasbord of film and TV projects — including 2000’s short-lived sitcom “The Geena Davis Show” — and lead roles in the iconic touchstones “Thelma & Louise,” “A League of Their Own” and “Beetlejuice” swept her into the top ranks of Hollywood’s most versatile and accomplished performers.
Balancing those achievements is her advocacy work as the founder of the Geena Davis Institute, which has partnered with studios, networks and producers to mitigate unconscious bias and increase representation across gender, race, ethnicity, LGBTQ+, disability, age and body type.
“I’m so blessed that I’ve gotten to do incredible things,” Davis said. “I’ve been a baseball phenomena [‘A League of Their Own’], an amnesiac assassin [‘The Long Kiss Goodbye’], the parent of a rodent [‘Stuart Little’], a dead housewife [‘Beetlejuice’], the president of the United States [ABC’s ‘Commander in Chief’], a pirate captain who had her own ship [‘Cutthroat Island’].”
She added, “I decided early on that I didn’t want to play just the girlfriend of the person doing the stuff. I wanted to do cool stuff, too. I have avoided being typecast.”
Setting those perimeters impressed producers while also shaping her personal and creative evolution.
“It was incredible to me that I became the person they would think of to play a president or baseball phenom,” she said. “These were characters who could do things way before I could do them. I didn’t know how to play baseball or any sport when I did ‘A League of Their Own.’ But I had to play a brilliant, believable baseball player.
“I love physical challenges. I’ve had to learn how to sword fight, ice skate, shoot a pistol, taekwondo, horseback riding. It’s like practicing to be this other person, and it kind of rubs off.”
She leaned forward as she noted that Renee fits snugly with her repertory of tenacious roles.
“When I read the script, I just fell in love with Renee,” Davis said. “I so identified with her. She’s a badass — more than I am, though I aspire to be that way in real life. She takes no s—. She’s ferociously brave and doesn’t feel like time has passed her by, which is what I feel like. I was in full action mode, and I love doing that.”
Centering a series on characters of a certain age was particularly enticing for Davis: “It’s such an unique project. I suppose from the outside, it just seems like we’re older characters. But it didn’t feel that way to us. I love how enthusiastic Netflix is about the show. They’re going all in, and no one is emphasizing that we’re older. It just is.”
Viewers who detect that “The Boroughs” has thematic similarities with Netflix’s kids-vs.-monsters blockbuster hit “Stranger Things” are spot on. Mark and Ross Duffer, professionally known as the Duffer Brothers, were the creators of “Stranger Things,” and are executive producers of “The Boroughs.”
Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, the creators and executive producers of “The Boroughs,” had Davis in mind when they developed the role of Renee.
“Geena was one of the people we wanted from the beginning,” Addiss said. “When we met with her, she was so excited. She said, ‘I want to be rock and roll and kill people.’ ”
Added Matthews: “I think of a Geena Davis role as iconic and strong, like in ‘A League of Their Own’ when she’s charting her own path. There’s her gravitas and seriousness, but in real life, she’s so sweet and funny and vulnerable. To see her do all of that in one scene is pretty impressive.”
Davis is already counting “The Boroughs” as one of the highlights of her career. She’s also thrilled that a younger generation is responding to her earlier work like “Thelma & Louise,” where she was paired with Susan Sarandon. Her former co-star similarly made a cameo in Carpenter’s set at Coachella during weekend one.
The moment was quickly planned. After Davis was contacted the day before weekend two, she watched Sarandon’s appearance and was initially hesitant: “I thought, I can’t come up with something that good, and they said, ‘No, it’s OK. Just do the same thing.’ ”
She loved the concept of Carpenter “being older and thinking about her younger self. Sabrina’s a doll, so wonderful and charming and real. Her show was called ‘Sabrinawood’ and she gave me a T-shirt that said ‘Geenawood.’ I really treasure that.”
Making the night even more special was a reunion with her “A League of Their Own” co-star Madonna, who performed with Carpenter. “That was fantastic. We took a picture together.”
The event also connected Davis with the continuing resonance of “Thelma & Louise.” The film, which also featured Brad Pitt in his first major film role, was a critical and popular success while also becoming a feminist touchstone.
Davis played meek housewife Thelma Dickinson, who sets out on a weekend fishing trip with best friend Louise Sawyer (Sarandon) to get a break from their less-than-ideal male partners. The journey takes a fateful turn when Louise fatally shoots a man who is trying to rape Thelma in a saloon parking lot. The two become vigilantes while running from police.
When cornered by the police, Thelma and Louise decide to drive off a cliff to their doom in Louise’s convertible rather than surrender. The shot of the car hurtling off the cliff is one of cinema’s most enduring images, illustrating unbreakable friendship, victory and freedom. Davis, Sarandon and director Ridley Scott were Oscar-nominated, and Callie Khouri won an Oscar for her screenplay.
“I’m so proud of that movie — it brings up such terrific memories and it changed my life,” Davis said. “To be part of a cultural landmark was something I never anticipated. It’s like, ‘How did I ever manage to be part of this incredible movie, and play a character who was so further evolved than I was?’ ”
The film also cemented a lifelong bond with Sarandon. “I was a person who felt I had to apologize for existing before I would voice my opinion about anything,” Davis recalled. “Susan modeled what I realized I wanted to become. From the moment I met her, I thought, ‘How have I never been exposed to a woman who says what she thinks without worrying about it?’ Seeing that changed my life tremendously.”
Her memory of the firestorm ignited by critics and others who felt “Thelma & Louise” was an anti-male manifesto is still vivid.
“The movie is revered now, but when it came out, it was crazy, right?” she said in an incredulous tone. “We were on the cover of Time magazine the week after the movie opened, and they had two different editorials denouncing the movie. It wasn’t enough to have one! They felt so passionate about us showing women with guns and shooting men. It was quite the ruckus.”
Winning the Oscar for “The Accidental Tourist” was a more pleasant recollection for Davis, although she was thrown by a bizarre incident as she was relaxing a few hours before the ceremony.
“I was eating a plate of spaghetti, and turned on the television,” she said. “Oprah Winfrey was on, and she was with five critics who were giving their Oscar predictions. Gene Siskel, Roger Ebert, Rex Reed, others. When they got to supporting actress, they all agreed that I had zero chance of winning! I just sat there, thinking ‘Well, that’s bad news.’ ” (The other nominees were Frances McDormand for “Mississippi Burning,” Michelle Pfeiffer for “Dangerous Liaisons,” and Sigourney Weaver and Joan Cusack, both for “Working Girl.”)
She paused, smiling, “So to go from being absolutely deflated to ‘Wow, it’s really fun to win an Oscar’ was wild.”
In addition to “Thelma & Louise,” Davis cites “The Long Kiss Goodnight” as perhaps her favorite role. She plays a mild-mannered schoolteacher and mother with amnesia who suddenly realizes she is a vicious assassin. The ultraviolent 1991 film was directed by her former husband Renny Harlin and co-starred Samuel L. Jackson as a lowly private investigator.
“In one, I go from a mousy housewife to a road warrior, and the other I go from a cookie-making mom to an assassin,” she said. “Both have tremendous character arcs. It didn’t do well at the time, but it has become kind of a cult classic. Samuel and I desperately want to do a sequel.”
And she is even upbeat about her more infamous collaboration with Harlin — the expensive pirate epic “Cutthroat Island,” which had a reported budget of around $115 million and has long been labeled one of the biggest box-office flops in history.
“It was an incredible role,” she said. “I don’t get people’s problems with it. The budget? Come on. Who cares?”
Davis’ trip down memory lane indicates deep pride in her credits. “Some people never watch their movies, which is shocking to me. I’ve seen all of my movies bunches of times. I’ve watched ‘Thelma & Louise’ dozens of times. When it came out, I learned to know what time the more startling scenes would come on, and I would go from theater to theater to see the audience reaction. When ‘The Fly’ came out, [co-star and ex-husband] Jeff Goldblum went to opening night in Times Square.”
She detailed how Dustin Hoffman advised her to watch dailies when they were working on “Tootsie.” “He said, ‘If you learn to watch yourself objectively, that can be very valuable.’ So I got used to watching myself on screen.”
She is now hoping that “The Boroughs” will be a prime addition to her body of work: “It was so fun, and I would love to do a second season.”
Cue the Geena-sance.
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