It takes so many people to combat the alien virus in The Andromeda Strain that it takes three subplots to even tell their stories. Viola Davis plays a character on the medical side, while the government and media work in parallel stories.
Viola Davis Battles The Andromeda Strain
"[I play] a pathologist, which is a study of tissue and diseases," said Davis. "I have been called by Dr. Jeremy Stone, who's part of this assembled team, to find out what this Andromeda Strain virus is that is threatening to destroy the world."
In the medical world, Davis had a lot of technical jargon to speak. "You know, the logic of how the virus mutates got confusing, but what was so great about it is because we were in such close quarters that life mirrored art, art mirrored life. We started to find out what these scientists actually were really going through in the story, as actors in this small space that they had constructed up in Vancouver."
Aside from being longer and updated from the original movie, this Andromeda Strain is much more graphic too. "Oh yeah, people are now chopping their heads off and having seizures and a lot of blood and gore. You've got to keep people excited. I haven't seen it yet but I hear that they're going to go a little bit far with it. It's Ridley Scott, Tony Scott. They've got a name to uphold."
Davis herself saw the original movie, but did not read the book. " Sometimes it's not helpful. If your character is not in the book, if the story resembles it but it's kind of mutated into something else, then it really doesn't help you so much. The script is more helpful than the book. I saw the original movie tons of times. I grew up with the movie. I don't want to age myself or date myself, but I grew up with the movie and I thought it was just fantastic. It was just one of my favorite science fiction movies growing up."
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