Kerry Washington reveals why she decided to stop playing 'the white girl's best friend'

Before she was Olivia Pope, Scandal star Kerry Washington was feeling a bit typecast.

In her new memoir Thicker Than Water, the actress explains how playing receptionist Renee in 2004's Against the Ropes was a turning point in her career. "In it, I played [Meg Ryan's] coworker and confidante – this was becoming a new niche for me, the white girl's best friend," Washington writes.

Loosely based on a true story of the first successful female boxing manager, Against the Ropes follows Jackie Kallen (Ryan) as she worked with boxing talent Luther Shaw (Omar Epps). It charted Jackie's breaking barriers in the male-dominated field, which mirrored Washington's desire for more substantive roles. It began with playing Chenille Reynolds in Save the Last Dance, best friend to Julia Styles' Sara, and included TV pilot Wonderfalls, but Against the Ropes would be the last time.

"When Harry Met Sally is, to this day, one of my top three movies of all time, so once I'd played Meg Ryan's best friend, playing the role against anyone else would have been a lateral move," she explains in her memoir.

Everett Collection Meg Ryan and Kerry Washington in 'Against the Ropes'

With roles like Della Bea Robinson in Ray and Kay Amin in The Last King of Scotland, she was playing characters whose arcs were their own. "It's not that I wanted to be the star of the film; I wanted my characters to be in a story of their own. I didn't want to be an accessory to a white woman's journey," she explains.

This period in her career included working with Don Cheadle, Eddie Murphy, and Samuel L. Jackson. As for Ray and The Last King of Scotland, both leads (Jamie Foxx and Forest Whitaker, respectively) went on to win Academy Awards for their work on those projects.

As for Washington herself, the work that has followed Renee would make history when she landed the lead role in Scandal. She became the first Black woman to lead a network drama in 38 years on a show that would become appointment television for seasons. The caliber of her impressive resume, which also includes Little Fires Everywhere and 2023 comedy series Unprisoned, is a result of decisions she made like the one after Against the Ropes. 

Little, Brown Spark 'Thicker Than Water' by Kerry Washington

Thicker Than Water allows Washington to share her life with the world in a way she has not yet done on screen. The memoir chronicles her childhood, career choices, building of her own family, and much more.

Thicker Than Water is out now.

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