#like its scary hes using his power to attack lgbtq communities and kids and then he has enough support that hes rallying for head seat | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

i-am-very-very-tired · 7 years

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I first fell for Kerry Washington after watching her performance in Our Song, a beautiful independent film, in 2001. I was studying theater at the University of California in Los Angeles and couldn’t convince any of my friends to trek across town to see a movie no one had heard about with actresses no one knew. What got me up and to the theater was the fact that the story—which follows three high school friends coming of age in Brooklyn—was about young women who looked like my friends and me. As these black and Latina girls navigated their complex young lives, I saw my own story of struggle in them. I sat through the film electrified. Washington, then 24, radiated off the screen. Her laugh made me want to know her forever. In the 16 years since, Washington has become one of the most prolific actresses of her generation. The Kerry we have come to know disappears when Kay Amin of The Last King of Scotland, or Broomhilda in Django Unchained, or Olivia Pope in Scandal, now in its sixth season, appears onscreen. It comes as no surprise that she’s been nominated for four Emmys and two Golden Globes. But Kerry’s acting career is just one side of her: She uses her platform to give voice to the most forgotten, to shine a light on the darkest of places. She has fought violence against women, raised money to protect the civil liberties of minorities, and advocated for the arts, among other things. She is a fierce ally, and I would know: As the artistic director of and a national organizer for the Women’s March on Washington, I reached out to Kerry to ask for her help. She immediately agreed. She was my sounding board. She was my sister. She helped me carry the weight of history. That day, hundreds of thousands of people listened to Kerry’s every word at the Los Angeles march. “Six months from now, a year from now,” she said, “if you feel like, ‘Wow, there is an agenda at work to make me feel like I don’t matter, because I’m a woman my voice doesn’t matter, because I’m a person of color my voice doesn’t matter, because I’m an immigrant, because I’m a person of the LGBTQ community, because I’m an old person, because I’m a young person, because I have a f-cking voice, I don’t matter.’ You matter!” In her art and her activism, Kerry’s message to us, always, is that we matter. The women she portrays are filled with searing dignity. In a world that tries to devalue women, particularly black women, to play these characters with dignity is to say that these women, these black women, matter—which is still a revolutionary statement. With her new production company, Simpson Street, she will bring even more of these characters into our world. At 40, and at the top of her Hollywood game, Kerry knows that her actions now will impact her own kids’ futures. The mother of two—she has a daughter, Isabelle, three, and a son, Caleb, seven months, with her husband, football player turned actor Nnamdi Asomugha—wants to create a world where “we all know in our hearts that we’re 100 percent worthy.” The one and only Kerry Washington, everyone. Paola Mendoza: Let’s start with where you are in your career and personal life: Besides, obviously, the sounds of your two beautiful children, what makes you jump out of bed at this point in your life? Kerry Washington: OK, I’ve been really trying to practice the Oprah Winfrey ritual: I check in with gratitude and grace when I wake up. I can be in a little bit of a state of overwhelm and panic if I don’t start out being connected to grace and gratitude. Paola: I’m overwhelmed by 10:00 in the morning most days! Kerry: I know. I’m like, “I need a nap.” Because of my baby or a 5:30 A.M. call time, the day starts really early. We have to pace ourselves. That’s a big theme for me these days. I have to pace myself for this political moment. Pace myself for my relationship with my family. Pace myself in my career to get through the rest of the season with a new child and a toddler. It is about slowing down, but it’s also about being present. Not rushing ahead or being stuck in yesterday. Paola: You recently turned 40. How do 20, 30, and 40 differ? Kerry: Life is just getting better. For me, 40 feels like a beginning. I’m in the middle of so much new—with this career, the kids, and I’m still sort of a newlywed. I’m excited to be at this stage in life. Paola: Let’s talk about your career: Is there a project or a role that has been the most transformative for you personally? Kerry: It’s impossible to say that Olivia Pope hasn’t been one of the most transformative roles for me. I’ve never played a character for this long. Olivia Pope also took my anonymity away. Before, I was a character actor: Nobody really knew that the girl from Save the Last Dance was the same girl from The Last King of Scotland. So I could show up and be a person in the public eye when it was useful, then dip out and have my life. Olivia Pope has really changed that. Paola: How much longer do you want to play Olivia? Kerry: It’s not really up to me. It’s up to Shonda [Rhimes, Scandal’s creator] and to the network. Shonda has said from the beginning that she kind of knows how it ends. So I’m trusting her to guide the arc. It’s also important for me to do other work—and playing Olivia gave me the opportunity to become a producer. The charge of my production company, Simpson Street, is to tell stories that are about people, places, and situations that may not always be considered by the mainstream. Inclusivity is not about, you know, creating a world where straight white men have no voice; it’s about creating a world where we all have a voice. So I’m excited to start that new journey, as a producer. Paola: And we need more women producers! On the show Olivia and her dad have had powerful conversations around what it means to be African American in the U.S. [In one scene, he tells her, “You have to be twice as good” as white people “to get half of what they have.”] What value do you see in those moments? Kerry: In the first season it was as if Olivia Pope was raceless. There was no denying that Olivia was a black woman, because I’m a black woman, playing her in badass white trench coats that call to attention the fact that I’m not looking like anybody else on television. But we didn’t talk about her identity as a black person. [Since then] the writers have become more and more willing to deal with race. When Olivia was kidnapped, it was not lost on me that the fictional president of the United States was willing to go to war to save one black woman at a time when hundreds of black women were missing in Nigeria and we were begging the world to pay attention. Shonda was saying, “The life of a black woman matters.” With her dad—he is trying to instill in her this generational learning about what it means to be a person of color in the United States. And Olivia is at odds with balancing the truth of his understanding with her ability to achieve things he was never able to. Paola: There’s a scene when Olivia’s dad says, “Get yourself some power.” Will Olivia ever be in power instead of right next to power? Kerry: She’s on a journey of discovering what it means to be in power, not just power-adjacent. I’m as curious as anyone about her relationship to power and how it’s going to continue to evolve. Paola: Is power something you would like to see in her character? Kerry: I want Olivia to be a whole person—to not have issues around healthy personal and healthy work relationships. But if she evolves in those ways, I’m not sure that we have a show anymore! Paola: One of my favorite quotes, which I have over my desk, is [from the German poet and playwright] Bertolt Brecht: “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.” Do you think that art is a hammer or should art be a mirror? Kerry: I think it is both. Art curates compassion. Art to me breaks down walls and allows us to step into somebody else’s shoes. Paola: What artists from previous generations have inspired you? Kerry: Jane Fonda, Cicely Tyson, and Diahann Carroll—those women are my lighthouses. Because their light was shining ahead, I knew where to go. They kept showing up for their art and values and that made me feel like I could bring all of myself to my work. Paola: How did they stand up for their art and values? Kerry: If society is telling us to look the other way, and you, as anybody from a disenfranchised community, are saying, “My story matters,” that is an act of activism. When Cicely Tyson wore her natural hair on television, it wasn’t considered beautiful for a black woman to wear her natural, textured hair. She made it mainstream. With Diahann Carroll, it was an act of activism just for her to be the lead on her own show, Julia. Art often leads to the opening of our thoughts as a society. Paola: How is this time in history changing you as an artist? Kerry: I’m not sure how it’s changing me yet. That idea of holding each other’s hands at the Women’s March—it feels like we are being invited to do that every day. So many of us are feeling attacked, whether it’s a woman’s right to choose or headstones in a Jewish cemetery, immigrants being deported or banned. So many of us feel the need to protect and defend our democracy. And march toward the dream of being “We the people.” So that’s exciting, scary, and frustrating. We’re awake. We are awake more than ever before, and we have to stay awake.… Can I say one more thing? For democracy to work, everybody has to have a voice. It’s not about demonizing other voices. It’s important that there be real conversations across the aisle. There are people on the opposite end of the political spectrum who think that I’m part of a left-wing propaganda machine. It makes me sad that people would think that, because I believe for democracy to work, there has to be diversity of thought. Paola: In these times, what do you do for your self-care? Kerry: Sometimes, when we’re feeling challenged in life, we feel a pull to isolate, and for me part of the joy of being a wife, a mother, and in a cast of friends is allowing myself to be in spaces of love. So being open to that love. Then, for me, self-love is like: Am I sleeping enough? Eating well? Not: Am I eating well to be able to fit into my skinny jeans? But: Am I eating well to be healthy and strong? And to acknowledge the good, because there is always a lot of good. Paola: Let’s talk beauty: Are there any rituals that your mother or grandmother passed down to you? Kerry: We’re an island people; my grandparents emigrated through Ellis Island from Jamaica. My parents’ first date ended at the beach. We’ve all been lifeguards in my family. So there’s a lot of water culture: I did water aerobics the whole time I was pregnant with my son. I drink tons of water—particularly now, as a nursing mom. With my skin, even, I use products all about hydration. It’s all about water! Paola: You project a sense of optimism. Where is your optimism coming from? And how can we all harness it? Kerry: My deepest desire is to create a world where there’s room for all of us, where no matter who you are, you get to wake up in the morning and know that you are worthwhile and deserving. If that’s the world I want to live in, I have to do the work to make that true for me. I have to do the work of self-love and affirmation, and say, “I am a woman, I am a person of color, I am the granddaughter of immigrants, I am also the descendant of slaves, I am a mother, I am an entrepreneur, I am an artist, and I’m joyful.” And maybe in seeing my joy, you can finish your sentence with, “And I am joyful too.”

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