Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Jessica Lange and More Cover The Hollywood Reporter Meet today's top TV drama actresses

Taraji P. Henson, Viola Davis, Lizzy Caplan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessica Lange, and Ruth Wilson cover The Hollywood Reporter as the top A-list actresses who dominate TV drama.

Inside the issue, the beautiful and accomplished ladies speak on “race, sexism, and aging Hollywood” during an intimate round table discussion holding nothing back talking the challenges and triumphs they each faced building a career in Hollywood. Check out some excerpts below.

Taraji P. Henson, 44, Empire, on her iconic character Cookie Lyon: “Cookie scared the hell out of me. Just before I got the role, I’d said, “F— it all, I’m going back to theater.” I felt lazy and like I needed to sharpen the tools. So I did theater at The Pasadena Playhouse. Then my manager said,”You have to read this script.” I’m like, “Hip-hop? Oh my God, what are they trying to do? Fox is going to pick this up? This isn’t HBO?” And then I got nervous and started pacing the floor. “Oh my God, Cookie is bigger than life. You will love her or hate her.” Empire has forced people to have conversations that they were afraid to have. And that is what art is supposed to do. I just didn’t know it was going to shake things up this much! (Laughs.)”

Viola Davis, 49, How To Get Away With Murder, on what appealed her to HTGAWM: “There was absolutely no precedent for it. I had never seen a 49-year-old, dark-skinned woman who is not a size 2 be a sexualized role in TV or film. I’m a sexual woman, but nothing in my career has ever identified me as a sexualized woman. I was the prototype of the “mommified” role. Then all of a sudden, this part came, and fear would be an understatement. When I saw myself for the first time in the pilot episode, I was mortified. I saw the fake eyelashes and, “Are you kidding me? Who is going to believe this?” And then I thought: “OK, this is your moment to not typecast yourself, to play a woman who is sexualized and do your investigative work to find out who this woman is and put a real woman on TV who’s smack-dab in the midst of this pop fiction.”

Lizzy Caplan, 32, Masters of Sex, on nude scenes: “I was more afraid of doing nudity on [HBO’s] True Blood. It got easier after that, but I’m not ever 100 percent comfortable. There was a scene last season where I take my robe off, I’m naked and then transition into locked-eye [with Michael Sheen’s character], full-on masturbation from beginning to end. We have a female showrunner who considers herself a prude, so the sex scenes always move the story forward. But I remember being in my trailer before that scene and thinking for the first time since the show started: “I really don’t want to go out there and do this.”

Photo: The Hollywood Reporter

Maggie Gyllenhaal, 37, The Honorable Woman, on transitioning from film to TV: “I’ve never done TV before The Honorable Woman. I was like, “This is eight hours long!” It was a scope I’ve never touched before. I had a moment of panic in my trailer where I thought, “Everybody on set is relying on me, but so are my two little girls and my husband [actor Peter Sarsgaard]. How the f— am I going to do this?” I had a big scene to do after that, so I put all the feelings I was having into it. I’ve never learned more from a role. Not just about acting, but about myself, being a mom, managing all of it with little kids and how to come home at night and put them to sleep.”

Jessica Lange, 66, American Horror Story: Freak Show, on bravest moment in career: “Having come from film, it was doing four seasons of American Horror Story. But I loved the tornado and chaos of never knowing where the show was going. It forced me to live within the imagination rather than, “You have a first act, second act, third act,” and you see what the character’s going to do. This way of working has been so unstructured and chaotic that I’ve found that the work itself has become more interesting within that insanity.”

Ruth Wilson, 33, The Affair, on typecasting: “For a long time, I did all these costumed, quiet, innocent women. Then I was offered a role on Luther — this psychotic, sexy, femme fatale character, totally at odds with what I’d done before. And it was exactly the right timing. I don’t know why the BBC saw me in that role, but I’m glad they did. It is amazing now to be able to play and shift.”

To read the full interview pick up the June 19 issue or visit THR website. Watch some clips from The Hollywood Reporter round table discussion below and share your thoughts in the comments.

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Photo: The Hollywood Reporter