Kerry Washington has taken on a plethora of roles that vary from comedy to drama and everything in between, but the last year has brought her acting career to new places.
With her lead role as Olivia Pope on ABC’s Scandal, Kerry has proven that she has what it takes to master the heaviest of emotional roles, but none more emotional than her latest role in Django Unchained.
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In the highly anticipated film, Kerry plays the wife of a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) who sets out to rescue her from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.
While the role is an absolute career changer for the actress, she reveals that it was also one of the most challenging she has encountered in her career.
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To celebrate to film, Uptown Magazine featured the Bronx native on the cover of their December issue.
Check out some excerpts from her interview with the magazine below.
On how she selects her roles:
“I try to make the best choices for me. It’s never been about, ‘Oh, this is what people should see or need to see.’ If you look at my body of work, I’ve always taken huge risks. At a moment when people considered me a serious actor, I’ll go work with the Wayans brothers on a silly comedy [Little Man]. I’ve played prostitutes, drug addicts, pimping lesbians. I do work I’m drawn to.”
On the stigma attached to a black woman playing a slave:
“If I were to say it’s okay to play a lawyer but not a maid, or it’s okay to play a professor but not a slave, that would be sort of spitting on the legacy of my grandmother, who was a maid on Park Avenue for years, or my ancestors in South Carolina, who came from slavery. What’s interesting about storytelling is we get to step into someone’s experience for an hour and a half in the dark, and in the process of living through that journey we learn about ourselves. That’s what it’s all about to me.”
On the challenges associated with “Django Unchained”:
“Django was the hardest film I’ve ever done. It took me to places I never had to go before—I never even thought about going before. It was crazy. You would be shooting in the fields and someone would stumble upon, literally, a piece of an old shackle. I kept saying I was going to send Tarantino the bill for my extra therapy sessions.”
That sounds like pretty intense circumstances to work under, and an extremely sensitive part of history to re-visit.
Check out the full spread in the gallery above.
SOURCE: Uptown Magazine
