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­Viola Davis accepting her Emmy award for leading actress in a drama.Credit Kevin Winter/Getty Images

When Viola Davis accepted her Emmy Award for best actress in a drama on Sunday night, she was the first African-American woman to ever do so. Feeling the weight of that moment, Ms. Davis quoted Harriet Tubman (“But I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line”) and put it plainly to the television industry about the lack of opportunities for black women. “You cannot win an Emmy for roles that are simply not there,” she said.

On Wednesday, Ms. Davis spoke by phone about the moments after her award and her sense of hope for women in the industry. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q. How are you feeling about everything?

A. I’m feeling good! I’m surprised. I usually go inside my head and start overthinking things whenever something good happens and talk myself out of the joy. But I haven’t done that this time, so I think that’s a sign of maturity.

Q. What has the reaction been to your award?

A. I feel like I’ve gotten a really huge response that kind of surpassed the award. Just people admiring my speech makes me feel really good. I remember Meryl Streep told me once, “You know, Viola, these young girls are always listening to us — every word we say is hitting them in a way that you can’t even imagine.” And that’s what I’ve found to be very true.

Q. Did you have that Harriet Tubman quotation picked out far in advance?

A. My husband and I are doing a Harriet Tubman project, and when it was picked up by HBO, one of the producers sent me that quote. It struck me in such a huge way because of its progressiveness, so it stayed with me ever since, and that’s been several months. I just felt it was apropos, seeing that no woman of color has ever won in that category. That moment had to be acknowledged, or else it would be a missed opportunity. It would be one of those moments I would look back on, and I would have regretted it.

Q.What did you and Taraji P. Henson, a fellow nominee in the drama category, say to each other when you won?

A. First of all, that was like the second or third time we hugged through the night. She said, “I love you,” and I said, “I love you more than anything in the world, I love you!” That’s what we said. I think at the end of the day, people want to be seen. And I think that’s why it was important for me and Taraji to acknowledge that in each other, to not just feel like it is competition, to just say, I see you, yes, I see you, too. I love you. I take you in.

Q. For you it is about inclusion.

A. If there has been any backlash, it’s that all people want to feel included in a speech. I know there has been some backlash with an actress who didn’t feel she was included.

Q. You mean the soap opera actress (Nancy Lee Grahn, who argued on Twitter that Ms. Davis’s speech was misleading because she was part of an elite group of actresses who had never been held back by discrimination)?

A. Yes. I don’t know that I want to say more about that.

Q. Did you get to see Uzo Aduba (who won the supporting actress in a drama category) or Regina King (supporting actress in a limited series or movie), at the after parties?

A. Oh, I saw every last one of them! I saw Uzo, I saw Regina, I saw Lorraine Toussant, I saw Niecy Nash, I saw Queen Latifah — I didn’t get to see Mo’Nique or Kerry Washington, who I get to see on the set every once in a while. But I am renewing my vows on Feb. 13, and I hope I will get to see Kerry Washington and Taraji there. Oprah sent me a bouquet. See, these are actresses I get together with every year, in community, in camaraderie, in sisterhood. It’s pointless to be in competition — it’s only adding to the pressure that the business is putting on you.

Q.You mentioned that you want change to come about in the industry. There was a recent study about how women are still vastly underrepresented in TV, both behind and in front of the camera.

A. I was reading Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” last week for some reason, and she spoke a lot about women’s plights in the 1950s. Women who were hiding behind the mask of well-waxed floors and beautiful applied lipstick and suffered in silence. And I don’t think that’s happening anymore. Women are bold! And now that I’m producing, I’m seeing what’s happening behind the scenes with people like Alfre Woodard, with people like Sanaa Lathan, with Taraji P. Henson, with Kerry Washington. These are all women who are producing their own material. They know their beauty, they know their talent. The women I know don’t accept the statistics anymore. They don’t accept the numbers as cementing their future.