Kerry Washington on the 'magical' events behind The Six Triple Eight
Kerry Washington is recounting the time she broke the internet over the summer. Mere hours before she emceed the final night of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, she spontaneously called her Scandal co-star Tony Goldwyn, who had hosted the first night in Chicago and was having dinner in town with his daughter. ‘I was like, can you get to the convention centre early?’ she says with rapid-fire enthusiasm. ‘And he said, “What are you talking about?” I was like, “We have this idea where I’m pulling out my phone to create social media with everybody in the convention centre!”’
As it happens, the stunt required Washington to fully invoke her tough-as-nails Scandal character, DC crisis manager Olivia Pope. After Goldwyn agreed to drop everything and head over, Washington found herself choreographing an impromptu reunion, deciding that he would run on stage when she called out for her phone. ‘It just was absolute chaos, but so delightful and so fun,’ she laughs. As the pair led a rousing chorus of Kamala Harris’ slogan ‘When we fight, we win’, the crowds went berserk. ‘People could feel our commitment to try to bring whatever we can to the moment,’ she reflects, ‘to let people feel the joy and the excitement and the potential of this moment in history.’
While Washington can call in reinforcements at the drop of a hat, there’s no doubt she can command the stage alone. Speaking to me over Zoom from her New York home, the Emmy Award-winning actor, producer and activist radiates star power, looking ready for business in tortoiseshell aviator glasses and with a glossy black manicure that flashes when she gestures to emphasise a point. In the six years since wrapping her career-making run on Scandal, which made her the first Black woman in almost 40 years to lead a primetime network drama, Washington has looked to the future, seeking roles that challenge her creatively and inspire change in the world.
Her latest project, The Six Triple Eight, represents an entirely new direction. Inspired by the true story of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, the only predominantly Black US Women’s Army Corps unit sent overseas during the Second World War, the Netflix drama, written and directed by Tyler Perry, shines a spotlight on a fascinating, forgotten piece of US history. Although donning a khaki uniform instead of Louboutins sounds like unlikely territory for Washington, the project was meant to be. In what she describes as a ‘very weird, magical unfolding of events’, she tells me that Perry initially emailed her with a sizzle reel, asking to talk to her about the movie. But it arrived in the middle of an ‘intense, busy cycle’, so she parked it. ‘I was like, “I will watch it this weekend,”’ she says briskly. ‘“I promise. I want to be able to give it my attention. Thank you so much for sending.”’
That week, Washington was busy recreating the looks of iconic Black women in history in an Instagram series dubbed BlackHERstory. In a stroke of serendipity, Washington’s social media director presented the story of officer Lena King, a member of the Six Triple Eight (6888), as one of the options. ‘I said, “Great, let’s do her,”’ says Washington. ‘And so I do this photo shoot in my garage for Black History Month.’
That weekend, Washington read Perry’s email. ‘I opened this file from Tyler, and it’s a whole movie about the 6888. I was like, “Oh, my God,”’ she says. ‘Of course, Lena is the lead character of the film, and he’s offering me their general, Charity Adams. And I thought, well, this is incredible, because while we were shooting the BlackHERstory, I was just thinking, I never get to see women of colour in this Second World War stuff. And it was so fun. I really loved taking on that aesthetic.’ She made up her mind on the spot. ‘I said, “Send me a script. How do we get started?”’
Washington’s preparation for playing Major Charity Adams was meticulous. The WAC’s first Black officer and commanding officer of the 6888, Adams was tasked with delivering a two- to three-year backlog of mail to soldiers overseas, enduring hatred and racism as her officers worked tirelessly to keep morale blooming. Washington read Adams’ memoir twice, watched interviews of her and spent time with a woman who was her driver in the 6888 in a bid to capture her likeness. ‘The people who knew her spoke about her with a real sense of respect for her stoicism, her austerity, her gravitas and also her authenticity,’ she says. ‘So those were things that I really tried to embody and think about.’
What she didn’t have to research, though, was the feeling of having more at stake as a Black woman. ‘I remember when we were making Scandal and there was so much talk about how there hadn’t been a woman on network television in almost 40 years in the lead role, and there was this sense that if we don’t get this right, it’ll be another 40 years before a Black woman is the lead of a show on television,’ she recalls. ‘Like, we have to get this right, and not just for us, not just for Scandal, but like for the sake of inclusivity in general. Looking back, I know there’s no Quantico with Priyanka Chopra if Scandal doesn’t work, because women of colour, period, were not thought to be number one on the call sheet for a network drama. I could relate to the sentiment of feeling the pressure to want to succeed, so that you could not just open the door, but leave the door open for more people after you. And I think, honestly, there is no Olivia Pope without Charity Adams, right? Like, she did transform our country’s relationship with Black women.’
For Washington, the act of becoming other people gives an illuminating lens on the human condition. ‘I’m lucky because I’m a woman and because I’m a person of colour, when I’m able to tell stories that centre people who look like me,’ she says. ‘Often, those stories are very rich and abundant with complexity and larger issues of humanity and belonging.’ Her back catalogue is full of roles that have challenged cultural norms. ‘Just as a Black woman, I’ve been able to play the wife of Ray Charles [in Ray], who stood at the forefront of the civil rights movement in music, and the wife of Idi Amin [in The Last King Of Scotland], who was part of such an important story about the danger of dictatorship,’ she says. She frequently discusses representation with Reese Witherspoon, with whom she collaborated with on Hulu’s Little Fires Everywhere. ‘When you centre a woman or when you centre a person of colour, in some ways, just because of the larger culture, it’s a political act, even when you don’t mean it to be, because we are still breaking free of the tendency to marginalise women and people of colour and other communities as well. So much of my career has been about the belief that people like me deserve to be centred, and so I think that can come across as a commitment to a political agenda.’
It was playing Olivia Pope on Scandal that left an indelible imprint on pop culture. Washington’s professional problem solver gave us iconic catchphrases, a contentious love affair and a killer wardrobe. What’s her relationship with Scandal like these days? ‘It’s just pure gratitude, right? Like, that the experience of making that show had such a transformational impact on culture, but it also had a transformational impact on my career and on my life, on my heart.’ She keeps up with the ‘Scandal family’ in a group WhatsApp and remains close with Goldwyn, who has become friends with Washington’s husband, athlete-turned-actor Nnamdi Asomugha, with whom she shares two children and a teenage stepdaughter. ‘I always make the mistake of introducing my favourite people to my husband, and then he steals my friends, because they always like him more than me,’ she smiles. ‘You know, whether it’s through politics or parenting or through making art together, we really connect on a lot of levels.’
Much of what drives Washington lies beyond the camera. In 2016, she founded her own production company, Simpson Street, named after a road in the Bronx where she grew up – her grandmother’s home after emigrating to the US from the Caribbean. She thinks about Simpson Street as ‘my once upon a time, where the story of our American dream began’ and says the company leans into ‘the intersection of what makes us all profoundly unique and also what makes us all universally the same’. She has a powerful angle of insight about platforming the beauty of difference. ‘I think everybody deserves the opportunity to see themselves; but also everybody deserves to be able to see stories that are not them, right? Like, there’s real power in tuning into a story about a world that you did not know existed before. I think that’s the magic that we’re always looking for.’
Washington’s latest ventures reflect that intentionality. There’s the Sundance documentary Daughters, which centres on four girls in Washington, DC, as they prepare for a Daddy Daughter Dance with their incarcerated fathers, and Hulu’s dramedy UnPrisoned, in which she plays a therapist attempting to reconcile with her fresh-out-of-prison father. For an actor known for dramatic performances, she’s relishing the joyful potential of comedy. ‘Not including anything having to do with my kids, because they are magic, my two favourite weeks of my life, when I look back, are my honeymoon and my week on Saturday Night Live,’ she says wryly. Working through a lot of ‘father-daughter stuff’ in her bestselling 2023 memoir, Thicker Than Water, which revealed that her dad is not her biological father, has helped inform her understanding of UnPrisoned. ‘I love the idea of being able to explore some really complicated, important issues around family and belonging and recidivism and the criminal justice system, but to do it with that spoonful of sugar, right?’
Up ahead, there’s the third Knives Out film, a TV adaptation of Araminta Hall’s Imperfect Women and action movie Shadow Force. ‘I’ve been trying to be guided by my desire to trust my own sort of intuitive pull and to let it lead me and the company in the directions that will be best,’ she says. Following your intuition always pays off, I offer. ‘No, but it’s newer for me. You know, I really do feel like it’s kind of as a result of the journey of my memoir that I have access to my intuition in a new way. So I’m excited about listening to it.’
The Six Triple Eight is available to stream on Netflix now
This interview is taken from the December 2024 issue of Red
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