Kerry Washington has no reservations about returning to her past restaurant job if Hollywood is only offering harmful roles when it comes to representation.
The “Scandal” alum has stood by her convictions for decades, and recently told Marie Claire in a cover story that she approaches her career fearlessly.
“Even in the beginning of my career, I would say I’d rather work another shift at the restaurant than do a movie that is going to be bad for women or Black people,” Washington said. “Part of being an artist, being a creative person, is constantly being willing to be a beginner and do things you’ve never done, be in situations you’ve never been, stretch, grow. I’m so attracted to that kind of work, but it is also so fucking scary.”
Washington reflected on leading hit ABC Shonda Rhimes-produced series “Scandal” as being “part of something transformative and culturally significant.” The Simpson Street production company founder uses her producer status to greenlit projects that “are trying to expand our vocabulary around what a protagonist looks like and is, and to upend the idea of other,” adapting series like “Little Fires Everywhere.”
The “American Son” actress previously revealed on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” that aside from working in a restaurant and as a yoga teacher, she also returned to substitute teaching even after “Save the Last Dance,” despite it being her “first big film.”
“It did not pay me a lot of money,” Washington said, “so after the movie came out, I went back to substitute teaching for a while. And then I had to make a rule that I wouldn’t work in high schools. I could only do elementary schools because kids were cutting class to see Chenille teach French. So it was bad. I would go into a school and I would see all these kids outside the window trying to see that girl from ‘Save the Last Dance.'”
The “Django Unchained” star addressed leading controversial Quentin Tarantino slavery revenge film in 2012, calling the script an “intense, original, and important” project at the time. “I thought I had never seen anything like this before and that it had to get made. I didn’t know if I was the right person to do it because it scared the crap out of me,” Washington admitted to IndieWire. “I was scared about the places I had to go emotionally and psychologically as an artist.”
She added, “I remember turning to Jamie [Foxx] one day and saying, ‘If this movie goes on for one week longer, I’m not going to survive it.’ My parents came down and my manager came down at some point because they were concerned. It was really tough. I guess one of the things I walked away with was more gratitude than I have ever had before for the people who were able to survive this period, because I feel like we barely survived it for pretend, for nine months. I got to go home and take a shower every night, eat a nice dinner and call my therapist.”
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