Welcome to Look Back At It, a column where some of the most iconic Black actresses in Hollywood reminisce and reflect on the roles that made them stars. In this installment, Kerry Washington breaks down her career—from Scandal and Save the Last Dance to her Hulu show, UnPrisoned.
“I joke a lot that throughout my career I’ve often wanted to quit,” Kerry Washington says after we’ve just reminisced about some of her most famous roles. “Every few years, I’m like, ‘I think I’m done acting.’”
It happened before the 2004 film Ray, in which she plays Della Bea Robinson, a preacher’s daughter who later becomes the wife of Ray Charles. At the time, Washington was feeling frustrated with the material she was reading. The roles were either demeaning to women, demeaning to Black people, or both. So she put the down payment on a New York yoga teacher training course with plans to become an instructor full-time. “And that’s when I read the script for Ray,” she remembers. “I lost that down payment because I thought, ‘I’m gonna go do this movie instead.’”
It happened again right before she landed the biggest role of her career, one where she made history by becoming the first Black woman to lead a primetime drama since Diahann Carroll. “Before Scandal, I thought about going back to school,” she says. “I was considering different graduate programs. And then I read the script and was like, ‘This was written for me.’ I mean, there were 35 other actresses who felt the same way, but I had to do it. Things would happen like that, I would feel frustrated, but then inevitably something would come across my desk that would make me rethink that choice.”
Since making her feature film debut in 2000’s Our Song, Washington has blessed us with a slew of other memorable characters (like Chenille in Save the Last Dance, Broomhilda in Django Unchained, and Mia in Little Fires Everywhere) that make us thankful she never quit. Below, she walks us through all of those and more.
Lanisha in Our Song (2000)
“This was my first feature. I had just graduated from college and it was like magic for me. I write about this in my memoir Thicker Than Water that for so much of my childhood, I would see planes through the window of my parents’ apartment going to LaGuardia Airport and I was like, ‘I want to be on those planes.’ I always wondered where they were going and what adventures they were on. I had a real escapist longing to be somewhere else and to be somebody else a lot of the time. But when we were making this movie, I thought, ‘I don’t want to be anywhere other than where I am right now.’ I was so happy to be making a movie and acting and doing what I love to do with people that I really admired and respected. It was a very special way for me to start my career. I’m really happy that my first film was a very scrappy, low-budget, independent film because it taught me that you don’t need big trailers and fancy things to make a great movie.”
Chenille in Save the Last Dance (2001)
“I had to audition many, many times because [the role] came down to me and a very well-known pop star who shall remain nameless. And I just remember praying that the studio would take a risk and hire me as an unknown rather than the other person who was a household name. Then when I got the job, I was so happy. It was my first time shooting on location in another city and I remember not wanting to waste my per diem on dinner, so I would take extra food from craft services and put it in my fridge for dinner that night. And then I would save my per diem and hide it under my mattress in my hotel room.”
Della in Ray (2004)
“This was a really, really special movie to be a part of. It was my first time working with Jamie [Foxx] who is just a supernova of a human being and an artist. One of the first scenes that we shot together was our character’s first date. And I remember being nervous about doing the accent and I was nervous about working with Jamie and I was nervous about everything I could possibly be nervous about. I just wanted to do a good job. So I’m really grateful to the line producers who built our schedule because I was able to merge some of my nervousness and awkwardness into a natural first date nervousness and awkwardness. I was grateful that I could use my truth in the scene in that way.”
Jasmine in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005)
“This was another really special film. I loved working with Angelina [Jolie]. She was so generous and kind. I’ve been really spoiled [with my co-stars]. Later in my career when I was doing Scandal, people would say, ‘You’re such a great number one on the call sheet. You’re such a great leader.’ I really credit that to the co-stars that I’ve had throughout my career because I’ve had incredible examples of what it means to be number one or two on the call sheet. Both Angelina and Brad [Pitt] were incredible leaders.”
Nikki in I Think I Love My Wife (2007)
“First of all, I loved my red hair in this movie. I don’t know why I don’t do red hair more often. But I remember when I read the script I thought, ‘Shouldn’t I be the wife?’ That seemed like the more natural role for me. I had played the wife in Ray and I had already done a movie with Chris [Rock] called Bad Company years before where we got married at the end. So I just didn’t see myself as Nikki. But Chris and I talked on the phone and he told me to go watch the French film [L’Amour l’après-midi] that inspired the script. I watched it and was like, ‘Okay, I get it now. I’m gonna go for it and push myself.’ And it was so much fun.”
Kelly in For Colored Girls (2010)
“One of my greatest memories was when we were all standing around on set and I said, ‘You know, Whoopi [Goldberg], your one-woman show on Broadway is part of why I’m an actor today.’ When I was growing up, we recorded her Broadway show on VHS. I also had an audio cassette of it and I memorized the whole show, and my mom, even though I was like eight or nine years old, used to let me walk around the house cursing because I was quoting the show. I thought what she did and how she transformed into all those characters was so magical. And as I was having this conversation with her, Anika Noni Rose was agreeing with me and she and I started reciting the show back to Whoopi. We both still had it memorized. It was like it lived in our bodies. To be able to give that to her in that moment was so special. I’ll never forget that day. Every single woman in this cast is somebody who I admire deeply and whose talent is a beacon for me. It was such a privilege and an honor to be in the film.”
Broomhilda in Django Unchained (2012)
“This was my reunion with Jamie and I was also such a huge Quentin Tarantino fan, so to get to work with both of them was extraordinary. This was one of the harder and more emotionally taxing roles of my career. To have to step back into those times and into the horrific circumstances that our ancestors survived through was hard. We were doing it on real plantations in New Orleans so you felt the spirit of our elders all around us. I was really grateful to Leo [DiCaprio], Christoph [Waltz], Sam [Jackson], and Jamie. There was a real solidarity in the cast where we took care of each other since the circumstances of the story were so awful and violent. And I think Sam’s performance in this film is one of my most favorite things he’s ever done. It was just so profound. Overall, it was a really extraordinary experience.
“And this crazy thing happened where our schedule kept getting extended, so I shot Django in between seasons one and two of Scandal. So I had this crazy couple of weeks where during the week I was playing Olivia Pope and on the weekends I was having to do reshoots for Django. It felt like historical, psychological, and emotional whiplash to go back and forth between being the most powerful Black woman in the United States who’s the embodiment of agency, authority, and power to a woman who was without agency and was considered 3/5 of a human being according to our constitution.”
Olivia in Scandal (2012-2018)
“I don’t even know what to say. Olivia changed my life. This was the role of a lifetime and I’ll never be able to repay Shonda Rhimes for how she changed culture and how I got to be a part of that. I loved Thursday nights [also known as #TGIT]. I used to be terrified that I was going to go into labor on a Thursday and wouldn’t be able to live tweet. So every Thursday when I was in the ninth month of both of my pregnancies, I would write out a bunch of tweets ahead of time so that, God forbid, if I went into labor, I wouldn’t disappear from the fans. Plus, people would have known that I went into labor [if I didn’t tweet], which I also didn’t want.”
Mia in Little Fires Everywhere (2020)
“I love Reese Witherspoon and was so excited to play this role and to produce the show with her. And Lexi Underwood, I mean, what a discovery with an extraordinary talent who continues to shine. This felt like a really great departure from Olivia Pope and I felt really grateful that Reese reached out to me when Scandal was ending because a character like that can kind of eclipse anything else you do in your career. I knew that I still wanted to be able to do other things and play other characters. So it was a really wonderful opportunity for me to be able to throw myself into Mia who was so different from Olivia.”
Paige in UnPrisoned (2023-present)
“I love working with Delroy Lindo. To me, he’s an American treasure. He’s one of our best and finest. I remember seeing him in Malcolm X when I was in high school. When I saw what he did with the character of West Indian Archie, it redefined my idea of what was possible as an actor. I begged him to do this role. I actually called Spike [Lee, the director of Malcolm X] and was like, ‘You have to put me in touch with Delroy.’ So he gave me his number. And every moment that he walks on set makes us all better. We are always rising to the occasion that is Delroy Lindo because excellence is his only gear.
“I feel really lucky that I’ve had such incredible co-stars. From the very beginning with Our Song to today working with Delroy, I’ve been truly blessed at every stage of my career to have extraordinary collaborators. And not just actors, but also writers, directors, and producers. That’s the thing that really stands out for me as I look at this trajectory. I think this column is such a fun idea. Thank you for honoring Black actresses in this way. It’s so special.”
Juliana Ukiomogbe is the Assistant Editor at ELLE. Her work has previously appeared in Interview, i-D, Teen Vogue, Nylon, and more.
