Kerry Washington: ‘We are awake more than ever before & we have to stay awake’

ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards

Kerry Washington covers the new issue of Glamour Magazine. While I find the cover way too busy, I enjoy the editorial as a whole (you can see all of the photos here). Kerry is just glowing these days, and before I read the piece, I had no idea that she just turned 40 years old in January. Good lord, she’s ageless. Anyway, Kerry has sort of mastered the art of doing magazine interviews and avoiding saying anything particularly pull-quote-y or controversial, yet she doesn’t shy away from controversial subjects, like politics, race, feminism and more. Some highlights from the piece:

Why she gets out of bed in the morning: “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…. 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.

Life at 40: “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.

How long she’ll do Scandal: “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.

Olivia Pope and racelessness: “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.”

Activism & art: “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.”

Being awake in the current political climate: “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.

[From Glamour]

The only thing I dislike here is that she’s using similar language as Susan Sarandon. The idea that now we are being occupied by a fascist force and that occupation has made us more “awake” is something I take issue with. Maybe it’s true for some people, that they were complacent through the Obama years and they always thought we were always going to have a sane, competent president. But a lot of us – millions of us – were plenty awake during the Obama years too. And I know for a fact Kerry was one of us. Also: “It’s not about demonizing other voices.” I’m so beyond that. Bless her for thinking the best of people and for making the effort. But the people across the aisle are getting in bed with Nazis, fascists, dictators and Vladimir Putin. Those people deserve to demonized.

ELLE Women in Hollywood Awards

Photos courtesy of Glamour.

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13 Responses to “Kerry Washington: ‘We are awake more than ever before & we have to stay awake’”

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  1. Eleonor says:

    I am starting to think they might have the same publicist. Or Hollywood publicists have decided that the “awake thing” must be the right answer fir this kind of questions.

  2. HadleyB says:

    There is no getting around the fact that now people are more ACTIVE with politics and they were not before. They might have voted in the past and stayed up to date on the news and what was going on… but now?

    There is so much more actual activity; calls, letters, marches, voicing opinions, doing anything to be heard and try to change things! It wasn’t like that in the past few years ( not that there wasn’t people doing any of those things before but the numbers are much much higher). And I think its a great thing.. I hope it continues and we don’t give in.

  3. Brittney B says:

    “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.”

    Well, exactly. Feminism isn’t about shoving men out of the way, black lives matter isn’t implying that other lives don’t… but white cis straight men still get VERY nervous when their voices and faces aren’t front and center. So… why can’t they make the cognitive leap? How do you think it makes US feel the rest of the time, guys?!?!

    I know she’s just speaking to that old (and depressingly still relevant) saying — equality looks like oppression… — but it’s a cliche for a reason. And it’s absolutely infuriating that human rights are still being treated like a zero sum game. There’s room for all of our voices.

  4. Nancy says:

    Before I even got to her name, I knew it was coming. Right out of the Susan Sarandon playbook.

  5. Bridget says:

    Politics aside, I preferred the first couple of seasons of Scandal, before it went insane. But maybe I’m biased because I think Fitz is the worst. But it just got so ridiculous.

  6. Turtle says:

    They are using similar language, but I would suggest there is a significant difference between someone who helped burn the house down in order to wake people up and someone who says, “Okay, the house burned down, let’s figure out what to do now and stay motivated.”

  7. anniefannie says:

    I think she makes a legitimate point. I watch every press conference, read politico every day and scour the news for the enivitable Trump admin misstep. I was engaged in politics b4 but now I’m consumed and so are the majority of my friends. Every dinner/party I’ve gone to is dominated by political talk/debate. In the past I think it was considered “bad form” to talk about your party affiliation, now it’s barometer of who I’ll hang with….

  8. courtney says:

    Susan Sarandon is a different thing completely considering she’s been politically involved/protesting since she was in college in the 1960’s so she’s an old timer in the movement while Ms Washington is not

    • Spicy chicken face aka jerkface says:

      Then why is Susan still so out of touch with the needs of the general public and minirities. Makes me wonder what she was martching for in the first place. Herself only

  9. sauvage says:

    I don’t think it’s fair to equalize Clueless Susan Sarandon and Diplomatic Kerry Washington. I’d say she is making a valid point. Clueless Sarandon said: “Everybody’s awake! This is great! This is so much better than Hillary winning!”
    Kerry Washington is saying: “Well, this sucks. At least people are awake, i.e. aware of the fact that this sucks, so what can we do about it? Let’s start by explaining to the people in the cheap seats that we don’t want to kill them and that instead, we’d just like to live, too.”

    I think what she’s doing is smart.

  10. wolfpup says:

    Comey, the FBI director – I have been trying to think about his punishment. I am so angry – and imagine all sorts of creepiness. However, may he be banished forever from participating in American life. There are no excuses…for derailing the woman who should have been our next president.

    May Kerri Washington’s life be somewhat the same, after this great joke Putin delivered.

  11. SM says:

    I may be missing a point, but it sort of asusses me how she keeps talking about scandal as some serious social commentary show. It’s a soap I barrely got to season 3 and stoped with Shona’s shows all toghether. Theu start off good byt then turn into pure soap. Not for me

  12. Sarah says:

    Can I say something totally superficial?? (Don’t throw things at me)
    The make up they did on her is terrible. She looks awful, really tired and her eyes laying dark in her eye holes. The pictures are amazingly shot, the dresses are awesome and Kerry is an absolutely beautiful woman, ageless just as you wrote, but the make up just doesn’t suit her and it’s not because she has a baby and a toddler and a full time job. It is because the MUA didn’t do his/her job properly. See, this is the power of make up: not only visible when it’s done right, but also when it’s done wrong.