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.
Photos courtesy of Glamour.
Source: celebitchy.com
2 total views, 2 views today
