The star of Shonda Rhimes’ unpredictable drama talks about working while pregnant, the unraveling of Olivia Pope during the “dark season,” and why she’s “blessed” to have received an Emmy nomination.
ABC
It's been four weeks since the Emmy nominations were announced and Kerry Washington is still lamenting Tatiana Maslany's Emmy snub. "It's so crazy that she's not nominated," Washington said of the Orphan Black star, who was overlooked for a nod after playing seemingly 18 characters on the sci-fi show. "Just, like, insane." The fact that Washington, who is Emmy nominated — as Best Lead Actress in a Drama for her incendiary work as fixer Olivia Pope on Season 3 of ABC's zeitgeist-grabbing Scandal — would take time out of her interview to shower praise on the competition makes it easy to believe the 37-year-old when she utters that commonly said, rarely meant platitude: This nomination is the real award.
"I have this crazy overwhelming gratitude because there are lots of people who do good work and don't get nominated," Washington told BuzzFeed. "It's a very small number who are able to receive this honor of being nominated, so I feel lucky and blessed because I know how many actors out there didn't get that call on Emmy morning."
But Washington is quick to add that she's careful not to equate accolades with accomplishment. "I think there's a little bit of a danger in making any award the symbol of success," she said. "There are phenomenal actors like Tatiana that aren't nominated this year, and absolutely deserve to be. So, I'm always reluctant to say this is the symbol of doing good work — but that being said, I feel very, very, very blessed."
Blessings were in no short supply for Washington during Scandal's third season: The Shonda Rhimes-created drama notched its highest ratings ever, owned Twitter every Thursday night, and reinforced her image as one of Hollywood's most adored actors. While always powerful, Washington's third season performance featured her at her most sensual (Vermont jam), complex (reconciling the realization she's "the help"), and emotional (so many trembling lips) thus far.
ABC
All the while, Washington was taking pages out of Pope's playbook and secretly planned her June 2013 wedding to football player Nnamdi Asomugha — the couple welcomed their first child, Isabelle, in April 2014. While Washington's pregnancy wasn't written into the show, she did reveal it had a profound effect on her performance.
"The thing that was challenging in a beautiful, exciting way this season was that I was going through this miraculous life transformation physically and emotionally, but Olivia was not," she said. "Because my body is where I usually ground myself as an actor — I look for ways to express character and identity through physical expression — it was fascinating for me when my body was changing every day, and I didn't have the same kind of access to my body as an artist, so I really had to access Olivia in other ways. "
"When you're a pianist, the piano is your tool of expression," she continued. "When you're a painter, your canvas and your oils, those are your tools of expression. When you're an actor, your body, mind, and soul are your tools of expression, so as you change, your toolbox changes, and how you interact with that toolbox changes. It's why self-reflection is important for me as an actor. I have to understand my instrument to understand how to play it. So as life changes, the tools change and I really had to discover those tools in a new way because I didn't have use of my body in a way I was used to and it was changing constantly."
And that acting evolution continues in Season 4 (which begins on Sept. 25) now that Washington is a mother. "I'm still discovering every day how it's impacted my toolbox because it's all very new," she added. "I'm an actor who loves to study — I work with teachers, I work with coaches, I'm always studying and reading and trying to grow as an actor, so it's exciting."
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