Viola Davis didn’t go into playing President Danielle Sutton as a “vision of hope.”

The G20 star told Blavity’s Shadow and Act Managing Editor Trey Mangum that it’s up to the audience to see her character as a hopeful vision of the future, especially considering how the U.S. nearly had its first Black woman president in Vice President Kamala Harris.

Instead, she said she approached the role by focusing on the gravity of the situation — saving her family and political leaders from a terrorist attack.

How Viola Davis prepared to play a president in ‘G20’

“The difficulty in playing a leader is you have to negotiate. You have to negotiate your responses,” she said. “You are at the G20 Summit. All of a sudden, there are explosions… your children are out there. Do you just fall apart? Do you just run off, take off your cape or whatever and say, ‘I’m gonna save my kids, forget about being president’? You have what is in me, what is in Danielle Sutton. I had to show people why she was elected.”

Why Viola Davis embraces action roles with heart

She added that taking on the action-heavy role was a refreshing challenge.

“The action always challenges me in a good way. … I love fight scenes. Let me tell you something, I love fight scenes ’cause I was always trying to beat up the boys when I was younger,” she said. “It makes me feel like a kid again.”

“But I feel that this [movie] has heart. It always [has to have] heart. It’s what makes people connect,” she continued. “You know, we are hardwired for connection as people and as artists. No matter what we do. That has to be the central focus in any film, whether it’s uber commercial or uber artistic. If there is no heart, there is no humanity there, and there’s no reason to sit with these characters for two hours or an hour and 45 minutes or whatever time it is.”

Watch the full interviews with Davis and the cast above. Also starring Anthony Anderson, Marsai Martin, Christopher Farrar and Antony Starr, G20 is now streaming on Prime Video.