Kerry Washington on What You Still Don’t Know About Her Memoir
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By now, you’ve probably heard about the major plot point in Kerry Washington’s new memoir. If not: In 2018, her parents told her that her father is not her biological father; she is the result of her parents’ use of a sperm donor.
It’s the inciting incident for Thicker Than Water, and also for a new chapter of the actress’ life — one that she is still getting used to talking about. Washington doesn’t often name this family secret specifically in conversation, referring to it throughout a long interview as the “information” or “revelation” — it feels less like an aversion and more like a byproduct of the business of protecting a highly anticipated book. (If anyone knows how to gracefully avoid spoilers, it’s the woman who played Olivia Pope.) But Washington, who sat with THR over crudité in West Hollywood a couple weeks ahead of the book’s release, has also been a deeply private person for the entirety of her career, and is still getting used to this kind of public candor. Much like her memoir, she is still unfurling this part of herself.
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“If you had told me six years ago that I was going to write a memoir, I would have said you were on drugs,” she says with a laugh. “I have been so private. I’ve built a career out of playing other people, and talking about myself this much is very weird. I’m so sick of me right now.”
Washington originally set out to write a more deflective book. After Scandal ended in 2018, she sold a nonfiction book concept inspired by the hit series. “It was going to be very fun and commercial — like, the 10 things that playing Olivia Pope taught me,” she explains.
Soon afterward, her parents shared their family secret, and she found she was too preoccupied to continue with her project. She tried to give the money back and move on, but her publishers encouraged her to keep thinking. The actress sat down to work out her feelings on paper — for herself and to better explain it to her two children with husband Nnamdi Asomugha — and soon realized she had the makings of a memoir.
The final version of Thicker Than Water traces Washington’s relationship with her own intuition and the ways in which her family’s secretive nature has thrust itself into other aspects of her life. In addition to the requisite familial history and school-era anecdotes, she dissects a few of her life’s darker moments — patterns of disordered eating, her father’s tussle with the IRS, a childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by an unnamed boy. “I think we are as sick as our secrets,” she says. “Withholding the truth can start to feel like a lie.”
Despite the way she has guarded her personal life, the actress has long had a symbiotic relationship with her fans; Olivia Pope felt like she belonged to everybody, and Washington has often used her various social media platforms to interact with the droves of women who look up to her. She harbors some anxiety about presenting these new sides of herself all at once, but she has a pretty good idea how people will react, because it’s already happening.
“Between 80 and 90 percent of the time that somebody reads the book, whether it’s a close friend or a journalist or an employee of mine, the first thing they do is tell me their family’s secret,” she says. Washington is prepared for more of the same on her upcoming 10-city tour (she’ll be joined onstage by friends including Eva Longoria and Tony Goldwyn), and also keeping her mind open for a miracle. “I still wonder a lot about my donor and if he’s out there,” she says. “I certainly don’t want a Cinderella-slipper moment of 10 men being like, ‘I’m your dad.’ But we’ll see.”
I have to say, it’s surprising to me that you never considered a memoir before this, as you’re an interesting person that a lot of people are interested in …
I know that I have had a really significant career. I know that I’ve been part of extraordinary projects and really special opportunities and that I’ve done work that is historic and lives in the canon. But all of that has felt like being part of something special, that I was part of exceptional opportunities, but it didn’t feel like I had an exceptional life or story.
What was it that helped you change your mind about, essentially, being special?
Well, I’m an only child, and for a long time I was a supporting character in my parents’ narrative about our family. In many ways, my dad was the lead character, and we were there supporting his narrative of the truth. When my parents broke the news, I instantly felt like a protagonist in a story. I had devoted my life to embodying other people’s stories, but suddenly I had a story.
When you say you’ve been part of exceptional things without yourself feeling exceptional, were you seeing the other people in those things as exceptional? In other words, were you treating yourself differently than your collaborators?
I saw Olivia Pope as exceptional. Jamie Foxx: exceptional. Shonda Rhimes: exceptional. Forest Whitaker: exceptional. I was part of something special, but I wasn’t the thing that was special. I was on great teams, but I never felt like the star player.
Do you look back on those moments differently now? Are you able to recognize yourself as quite special?
I can see both sides. I don’t want to walk away from this process being some queen narcissist thinking it’s all about me. I want to have times in my life where I’m the supporting character in my husband’s story, or my children’s. Their lives should be theirs. But I think we should always have the option to choose, and to know that we are the lead character in our own lives. I don’t think I knew that before.
You’ve talked a bit about your work, in the writing of this book, to become less private; do you see this story as something that you owe your fans?
I’ve been very private in terms of my marriage and my children, but I have made my relationships with my parents very public. I was always on red carpets with them, I’ve done interviews with them. So to not tell this truth suddenly felt like I would be complicit in their lie. If I’m in an interview and somebody says like, your son looks so much like your dad, it’s weird for me to say nothing. If I’m on a roundtable of actresses and everyone is talking about freezing eggs, fertility, sperm donors, and I don’t share this? That feels like deceit.
You write a lot about your struggles with body image and disordered eating and exercise, do you think those issues were made worse because of your career?
Those obsessions were so debilitating, and crazy-making. I felt so trapped. I remember praying for my day to be about something else, anything else. I first went into therapy for it in college, so I think a lot of it stemmed from the pressure of perfectionism. I do think Hollywood poured gas on the problem, but I come from a legacy of addiction — it runs very deep in my family, and I think this is how it was expressed for me. I also don’t think it’s disconnected from the sexual abuse, or from being born into a body that I felt there was mystery around. I could not have articulated that to you before this revelation. I definitely don’t blame Hollywood, but I have chosen a profession where it is a playground full of opportunity to work on it and continue to liberate myself from it.
What was your actual writing process like?
That entire opening chapter in the book, where I talk about sitting on the corner of Coldwater Canyon getting the phone call from my parents, I did by talking into my voice memo app. Some of the book I wrote by dictating to someone. I had a couple friends who were writers and would help me be accountable; I would write 500 or 1,000 words a day and send it to them. I remember toward the end of the process, my editor was like, “You mentioned your abortion and you mentioned a miscarriage, but there’s nothing else in the book about it.” And I emailed a friend of mine, like, I know I sent you something about my abortion story — so he found it for me [and now it’s in the book]. I also wrote a lot of this book standing in my closet. I don’t have a big Hollywood closet, but I do have an island to stand against with my laptop. It feels like a cocoon in there, and my kids won’t bother me if I’m in there.
Who were your closest or earliest readers?
When I was done, the first people I showed it to were my parents and my husband. Then my shrink, then Shonda [Rhimes], then this incredible writer Ashley C. Ford. I didn’t really know her, but I really felt like my book wouldn’t be able to exist if not for hers, because of the level of honesty and vulnerability and the way she talks about her family so courageously. I remember being like, I need to talk to this woman and find out how she’s doing this. So I became friends with Ashley, and she did an early read for me as well.
Was it hard to take feedback?
Especially with Shonda, for seven years she let me offer her feedback about her writing. (Laughs.) So it was only fair that I be really open for hers. She actually gave me a suggestion that was pivotal — I had this passage at the end of the book, that was like, “This is why I wrote this book.” She suggested I lift it out and put it at the beginning, almost as a statement of purpose. It really set the right tone before I get into some really tricky stuff about my parents. It felt kind and generous, which is the way I want to be toward them because I’m madly in love with them.
What was your feedback style when you used to give notes to Shonda?
Well, always super respectful. I would start with three things I loved about the episode and then: Here’s the one tiny thing that I might want you to consider changing if you’re up to it.
Did you ever suggest anything that had a big effect on the show?
The thing that comes to mind, interestingly, is that I begged her to make Olivia Pope pregnant when I was pregnant, because I knew my body was changing. She was so adamant about not doing it, and I didn’t understand it at the time. I was heartbroken. We had to use so many coats and bags and lampshades — I did inspire Prada to make bigger bags, which was great. But Shonda was right, Olivia should not have become a mom — at least not during the period of those seven seasons.
I really enjoyed reading about the way you and the rest of the cast formed an almost grassroots campaign for the show, especially with all getting together to live-tweet every episode. Can you talk about that?
I really credit Allison Peters — she’s a fellow Spence girl who had run social media for Viacom and offered to help me with my digital and social media stuff. She saw that we needed to think about this the same way that I was approaching my work on the Obama campaign: How do you get control of the narrative and the marketing, when you can’t compete with the big donors, or in the show’s case the big fall releases? We were a tiny midseason replacement with six episodes, and we were willing to do anything and everything to make the show work.
What are your thoughts as you head into this huge book tour?
I picked my friends to be onstage with me because it’s so personal, and I wanted to have conversations with people that I really know and love and feel safe with because that will let me be as unguarded with audiences as possible. I do feel more nervous, with this, than I have felt in a long time. It’s just me. There’s no director to blame. (Laughs.)
What are you looking forward to once it’s all done?
I’m hoping that the strike is over when the book tour is done so that I can go back to the various projects I’m working on. I’m in post on a show at Nat Geo, and we’re in post on two films. I’m glad to at least still work as a producer. I’m curious about going back to our show Unprisoned, because I love it so much and I love the character, but she’s feeling further and further away. She feels like someone I have to go back into, which is maybe scarier than starting a new project. I’ll go back to my source material and work with my [acting] coach and figure it out. I’m sure we’ll do a time jump for the character as well. But the experience of this book has helped me still be creative, and my unconscious gets to express itself and get a good workout.
A version of this story appears in the Sept. 27 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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