Sunday Sitdown with Willie Geist - Kerry Washington

Episode Date: November 10, 2019

Kerry Washington has a habit of playing strong women, from Anita Hill in the 2016 film "Confirmation" to her seven-season run as Olivia Pope on the hit show "Scandal." In this week's "Sunday Sitdown," Willie Geist talks to Washington about how starring in that show changed her life, her latest role in the Broadway play turned Netflix movie, "American Son," and why her parents didn't want her to become an actor. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, Willie Geist here with another episode of the Sunday Sit Down podcast. My thanks, as always, for clicking and listening along. My guest this week, a great one. Kerry Washington. Carrie is the star of the new Netflix film, American Sun. It takes a raw look at race and policing in America. American Sun started as a Broadway play. It was a hit there.

And so now they've made it into a Netflix film, basically in its original Broadway form. Same cast, virtually. the same set, and it's a 90-minute film that just grabs you from the beginning and doesn't let you go. We'll talk about that and more in the interview. I'm joined on this podcast by the producer of the podcast. Maggie Law. Hey, Maggie.

So we're just talking about how much we love Kerry Washington. Yes, yes. Great actor, obviously, incredibly intelligent outside the realm of film. Yes. Takes her activism seriously, incredibly well-versed on politics and issues of the day. Her big hit, of course, was Scandal, right? Seven seasons on Scandal. She landed that gig in 2012.

She played Olivia Pope, a Washington fixer. Kind of a juicy role, I think it's fair to say. Definitely juicy. She's a relationship with the President of the United States. Everybody loved that role of Olivia Pope. But she's got a long backstory that started in the Bronx where she grew up. And with the parents, her mother, a teacher, her father, a realtor. She was a professor, actually, her mother.

And they were very skeptical about her dreams of becoming an actor. Yeah, I know. She says she didn't want, they didn't want her to become an actress. But one of my favorite ones, she said she was with her mom at the Emmys and her mom sliced into a filet mignon. And she says, starving artist, mom. Yeah, because her mom held that over her head. She's like, you're not going to be a starving artist. Right.

You got to go to college. You can do drama, but you've also got a major in something else. Right. She believed that would be a real career. Right. A real career. And Carrie talks about after college, she was studying for the LSAT, getting ready to, like, move on from it. Right.

She said she gave herself a year, right? I feel like most of the actors, they're like, give yourself a year. And then it's like, that thing comes in that year. And you're like, I can do it. And for her, that was Save the Last Dance with Julia Stiles. That was the flick that launched her. She's played supporting roles in Oscar-winning movies like The Last King of Scotland and Django Unchained. Viewed in Hollywood as a great actor.

And she said even she was comfortable. with her life as being sort of a character actor. Right. Somebody, oh, I know her. But then scandal turned all that upside down, made her into an even bigger celebrity. Very private with her family. Yes. Her husband is former NFL star, a pro bowl cornerback, Namdi Assamois.

And they have three children. We get into all of that and how she now has to kind of try and work hard to keep her life private. So keep that private. Yeah. Recommend the celebrities when they do that. 100%. I respect that privacy. I should point out that Carrie and I sat down for this interview in a noisy, bustling New York City midtown lunch spot.

Midtown lunch spot. Called Tretoria del Arte, well-known place on 7th Avenue. So there's lunch going on all around us. You might hear a little background noise. We went to the antipasto bar before we sat down. Wow. Got a little of that delicious Italian food. Then we cleaned the zucchini out of our teeth and the eggplant.

And we sat down and talked first about. her film. American Son, the new Netflix film that's got a lot of people talking. Now, Carrie Washington on the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Carrie, thanks for doing this. Thank you for having me here. How about that antipasti? I mean, perfect. How you feeling? I feel great. Good. So I was just telling you a minute ago, this morning I got off the air doing my show and I sat in a dark office and watched American Sun and just needed to like go walk around the block for a minute. It's so good. It's so intense and so well done. For people who haven't seen the play,

how do you describe it, first of all, before we sort of dig into the component parts? Sure. So the whole film, first play, now film, takes place in real time 90 minutes in the lobby of a police precinct. And it's the story of a black mom, played by me, and a white dad who are desperately looking for their 18-year-old son

who's just gone missing. and they know he's had some kind of altercation with the cops, but they don't know what's happened. So it's really that dropping into that parent's worst nightmare of not being able to track your kid down and spending that time with them to learn kind of how extra complicated it is when that child you're looking for is black

and is involved with law enforcement. So, yeah, so obviously it was adapted from the play, but it seems to me that it's very close to what the play was in terms of obviously the cast is the same, but the set is very similar. The wardrobe, all of it. Yeah, we brought a lot of the same designers. It was the original cast,

and we brought a lot of the same designers, production design, costume design. I feel like I had two big desires for myself in making the film. I wanted people to leave with the same feeling they had leaving the play, which was a feeling of wanting to continue this conversation, wanting to make a change in the world,

wanting to be able to impact the lives of young people so that we don't continue to have parents up in the middle of the night terrified for the outcomes of their kids. But I also really wanted people to want to go to the theater. I wanted people to feel like they had been part of a theatrical experience and to want to be part of our really beautiful theater community. So when we did the play, I was so proud of it, but there were barriers to entry based on geography.

Not everybody can fly to New York to see a play on Broadway. Based on price, Broadway tickets are expensive. So being able to bring the film to Netflix means that it's available to anybody all over the world, all the people on social media in Paris and Brussels and London and Sao Paulo and South Africa, all these people who were saying, like, we have these issues in our community. We wish we could see it. Now they can, which is so exciting. Was there any temptation as you moved it from Broadway to Netflix?

to sort of make it more Hollywood, to make it more of a movie? Because it doesn't seem to me like you compromise very much. No, I really, I think it was important to us, because theater is so much about the written word and the magic of the playwright, we didn't want to change a single word. But we did take some visual liberties.

You know, we added these pop-out moments where things that we talk about in the play, you could now see them, the memory of the first time we met, the memory of Kendra's argument with Jamal. When she describes being in bed, and worrying about him at various times. Now we can actually cut to those moments and experience them with her.

What did this story say to you? When you first read the script and people said, we want you to come back to Broadway after, I guess, 10 years or so. Why was this the right story to bring you back to Broadway after your successful screen career?

I didn't. I wasn't looking necessarily to come back to Broadway. I love doing theater. I come from theater. It's really important to me to do it. But after a scandal, I really wanted to take a nap. I really wanted a break.

I wanted to just take some time to process what these seven seasons, the impact that they had had on my life. My life changed so much in those scandal years. But really, I just read the play. I read the play, and I was so moved. I feel like the play is so important and probing and smart and funny. and honest and necessary, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity. One of the things for me, and I don't want to give too much away, who haven't seen it yet,

but is how you represent so many different points of view and you're surprised. Yes. I'm trying to say things, but like you're surprised by... So many details. So many details of the story. What they think. Because you're on a track of, okay, I get the story. I know who person X is going to be.

and then it's not. Yes. And then I know a person-wise is going to be, and it's somebody completely different. Yes. The storytelling is well done because it forces you then to reconsider the way you were thinking about the story.

Yeah, I think what happens is because the story unfolds in ways that are unexpected, I think we are all forced to come to terms with our unconscious bias. Right. Why did I think that person was going to be white? Why did I think that person was going to be black? Why did I assume that this would be and that would be

Like it really allows everybody. I've never met a person who wasn't surprised by at least two things in the play and now film. So that allows us to think about ourselves, to look in the mirror a little bit and say, what are the assumptions I'm making about the people in my life and the people in this world? And how is that not okay? It's such a relentless play now film for 90 minutes. I mean, you never let go of the audience. You in particular.

Yeah. And I said to you a minute ago, I'm watching. and going, she did this eight times a week? I mean, you do that once and just walk away, printed, I'm done. Yeah. What was that experience like doing that emotional of a performance eight times a week? It was pretty, I mean, to be honest with you, I think it was a level of trauma that required me to disassociate a little bit because I don't remember. I mean, the first time I saw our first cut of the film, I turned to our director, Kenny Leon, and I said,

How did I do that eight times a week? You did? Yeah. I said, I don't understand how we allowed ourselves to drop into that nightmare eight times a week. And I did. There was something I did as an actor that I think was really helpful. You could call it a dream exercise, meaning a lot of times I kind of gave myself the exercise of having Kendra be in a dream. And so it allowed me to kind of maintain the sense of disorienting.

and surreality and to kind of question, do I know this person? Have I met them before? What's the reality here? What's going on? There was a necessary level of disorientation for her. So I do think maybe the fact that I allowed myself to embody it as a dream helped me make it through. But it was not easy.

I mean, what's it like because you're living for two and a half months? I guess it was. Four months. Four months. Excuse me. It was four months in that character just to like come. home and get out of it with your husband and your two kids. You know what I mean? Because you're, I imagine you're so wrapped up in it. How do you escape from it? You know what?

They were my lifeline. Because in a lot of ways, to be the kind of wife and mother that I want to be, I had to shake her. I had to leave her at the theater. And so in a way, I had this very solid reason to be in love and joy when I wasn't being Kendra. And I think that was really helpful. It's obviously such a timely piece. And I was thinking as I watched it the last, I don't know what the number of years is, but the last few years, a lot of people in this country, white people in particular, have had to confront this thing that looked new to a lot of us. And then when I talked to all my friends are like, oh no, this, this, when my son turned a certain age, he was about to get his license, this is a talk we had, and my dad had it with me. And I feel like a lot of people have

just sort of awoken to this. Yeah. So did this feel to you like the right moment to sort of push that a little bit further? I think so. I think there were kind of parallel tracks of character development for me that were going on. One was very personal, kind of psychologically based, which is I am a black woman, I have black children, I've been in interracial relationships. In fact, I felt like for seven seasons I had explored kind of the fantasy of how amazing an interracial relationship could be,

and this was a chance to kind of flip the coin a bit. But there are parts of Kendra that are very personal to me, and it required the courage to reach into my own experience and understanding and imagination of, of her internal life and what I know personally about her internal life but there was a parallel track

in the character development that was less about me and more about the legacy of state violence against black bodies men and women and I had a wall in my dressing room where I would post images of people who have fallen victims

about state violence whether it was Emmett Till or Rodney King people who were actually victims of state sanctioned violence or never got justice because of race due to our corrupt criminal justice system. So I had, quite honestly, everything from slave ships on that wall to Emmett Till, to Philando Castile, to Corinne Gaines, to Sandra Bland. And so I was also tapping into a larger kind of historical embodiment of what it means.

to parent black children today, but also for centuries. And even within the script, you mentioned Timur Rice, and you mentioned Philando Castillo, and Eric Gardner. And a lot of those moms, the mothers of the movement, came to see the play. I was gonna ask you. Sister. And I got to bring them to the dressing room,

some of them, and show them that wall, and let them know that I am trying to do my best to honor them and to honor their pain, and then to honor kind of the, ongoing fear that all parents of black children have. And to say, you know, I dare you to step into this nightmare with me for 90 minutes and then tell me that we're overreacting. You know, if you walk with this, if you live with it, and if you embrace Jamal as your own, which I think is part of what's so smart about making his dad white, right, is that he really does belong to

everybody, then you start to understand what's at stake in the black community in terms of our relationship with law enforcement. Yeah, and I mean, you've talked about this before, but you worry about your own real life, your own father. You've got a son that you're going to have to talk to about this, your husband, cousins. Right. And I think a lot of people in this country either just didn't know or completely underestimate how real that is for people every day. How do you describe that fear as a daughter and a wife and a mother? And also, you know, for myself.

Like, I fear for myself also when I think about how much. many women. I don't think we talk enough about the women who have also fallen victim to these circumstances. And I do. I worry about myself. When I am, when I have a cop drive, and listen, I know that there are great police officers and I know that there are people who enter that field for the right reasons and to do good. I cannot deny the fact that because of the historical reality, when I have a police officer driving behind me, I pull over and I let them pass me. I will not let myself ride on the road with them behind me because the anxiety, I, you know, know will force me to do something stupid and then really get in trouble. I cannot take it.

And if you're feeling that way, famous Carrie Washington who gets pulled over and they'll just, hey, Carrie Washington, imagine what millions of other people are feeling who don't have that advantage. That's right. Yeah. So what do you hope someone who hasn't had these personal experiences takes away from watching this film? How does this move the conversation forward in the country? Well, I do think, I think Christopher Demos Brown, our brilliant writer, has done such a great job in making Jamal the child of a white father and a black mother because two things happen. I think black parents get to have their experience validated, honored, held up, shared, talked about in an open, honest, transparent way. That feels really important to me as a black parent. but also people who are white or other races

who don't feel this kind of pressure, they get to actually imagine what it would be like to live under those circumstances. I mean, I think Stephen Pesquale is so brilliant in the film. And one of the things I think he does so beautifully is that that character, Jamal's dad, enters the film with all of this kind of swagger and privilege. He's got his FBI badge.

He knows he's going to get his way. He walks in the world. with this kind of white male entitlement that he knows he's going to win and people are going to give him what he wants. And he has to experience how none of that matters when you are the father of a black child. Because your child is black,

you are as vulnerable as any other black parent despite who you are. So I think having other people have a chance to open their hearts and walk in the shoes of this black family feels really important because I think the way the picture is painted is really easy to understand and feel empathy and compassion for their journey. Do you feel like it's getting better, Carrie, in this country because of the awareness we have over the last decade or so. Obviously, it's still

happening. Yeah. Both of John is one of the latest examples. But... Atatiana. Atatiana, exactly. Do you think it's getting better? I think we're willing to talk about it. I think we're willing to talk about it. it more. I think the awareness of the issue is getting better. And I think one thing that's happening that I think is really exciting is people are beginning to understand the importance of local civic engagement. Like we're beginning to step back and say, okay, if these are the problems that are at hand, and these folks making the laws and the rules and the decisions around these issues of criminal justice reform and police behavior, accountability for prosecutors, accountability for police officers, we have a say in whether or not people are doing a good job around these

issues. These are folks who are employed by the city and the state, which means they work for us. And either we voted them in or we pay their salaries because they are employees of the state. And I think we're beginning to understand that we get to ask for a different kind of accountability. We get to, as citizens, have our representatives represent us in the ways that we want. So that awareness, I think, is really changing. and people are inspired to vote locally, I think, more than they have before, and write letters to their representatives and care about who their sheriffs are and who their DAs are and what judges are being appointed.

I think we need to do even more of that, but I do feel like that awareness is growing, both the problem, the awareness of the problem, and the awareness of some of the solutions. Do you think the film's a piece of activism? And I mean that in the best way. I mean, you're using your platform and your voice, and a lot of people are going to see this film. Yeah, I hope a lot of people see it from your mouth. Godseers. You know, I, it's funny. I get asked that question a lot about, like, am I drawn to

activist work? And at some point, I realize that because of the way that we have painted our heroes traditionally, just being a woman and being a black person who stands at the center of a story as the lead character is an act of activism. Because I'm saying, like, here I am, this person that society sometimes wants to disenfranchise and remove from the center of the story, somebody who we want to quiet and silence and walk past. I'm asking you to look at me, to be with me, and to walk in my shoes for 90 minutes. So that is because we don't walk often in the shoes of black women in our culture, that is an act of activism. Well, it's a breathtaking performance, and I really mean that. I just can't believe that. Still, I'm like, I was tired

watching it for 90 minutes. I can't believe how well you do it and how well you have done it. Thank you. We were talking earlier about your high school days. Yes. But I'm interested in before that when you actually sort of discovered that you were something of a performer. Because I know it didn't really come for your parents and they may have been skeptical about it a little bit. They were very skeptical. When did you feel yourself like, hey, I've got a knack for this? You know, as resistant as my mother was to me pursuing a career in the arts. because my mother's a retired professor of education. So this was like crazy talk for me to go be a professional artist.

But she is part of the reason. I mean, she raised me to be a lover of the arts. I grew up in New York City. I wanted to be on Broadway before anything else, before on anybody's screen because we went to tons of plays. We used to stand in a TDF, half-priced ticket line and see shows. But when I was in high school, I went to Spence here in New York, and I was in a production of him.

Hamlet and I played Ophelia and I did my grand exit when Ophelia goes mad and I looked over at my mom because she was an amazing mom and she was volunteering that night giving out programs or selling coffee or whatever she was doing and she was crying and I remember being really impacted one because my mother is not a crier but also because this woman who gave birth to me who held me in her body who knows exactly who who I am. If I could get her even for half a second to think that I'm somebody else, there's so much power in that. And I just thought, oh, I need to pay attention to that reality, that I could even make my mom believe that I was somebody else for a moment.

So was there a temptation then when you went to college to pursue that? Because you went to GW. I did. And you studied, I mean, education, it seems to me anyway, yes, you were an actor, but you always put education ahead of everything. I do. Well, I think I work, as an actor, I work very much like a social scientist, to be honest. I'm always thinking about the psychology of the character, how they became who they are,

how they express the performance of their identity in everyday life in kind of a Goffman-esque way. But also I'm thinking about, as I mentioned, the history, the sociology, the anthropology, what are their rituals, what societies do they belong to, what cultural factors help to create the dynamics of who they are and how they're behaving in the world. So I work very much as a social scientist in my work, and my liberal arts background has a lot to do with that.

But I was also in college on a theater scholarship, which was great because I usually say it was kind of like being on the basketball team. Like I got the money because I wasn't going to get benched. I would audition for every show, and I got to do a ton of theater while I was there. And it was the first time that I realized, oh, this institution is willing to give me an enormous amount of money. I'm paying a big portion of the fees for my degree with my acting. So, like, maybe I could make a living doing this. I don't know. Well, that's a crazy idea, right?

But here I am. Here you are. It seems to be working out pretty well for you so far. So far, so good. As we've been talking about, that it's all going away tomorrow. Yes, yes, it will. It will. For both of us.

That's my panic of why I work so hard. It may disappear at any moment. What was your first paying gig as an actor? Do you remember what it was? Yeah, my first paying gig as an actor was a, oh, wait, I actually was in a theater company in high school. So not on camera. I was in a theater company. It was a really groundbreaking theater company.

We actually became the model for theater and education for the National Institute of Health because we were doing a show in the early 90s around AIDS prevention, HIV prevention, education. So it was a show that was about safer sex and homosexuality and self-esteem and drug use, and we would perform in different high schools and community centers. And that was a paying gig. That was a paying gig. That's young for a paying gig, too. Yeah.

So when was the, once you're out of college then, then, when is the moment where you do say, I can do this for a living? Like, this is the breakthrough and this is what I'm going to be when I grow up. So I gave myself a year after graduating where I had to book something really significant or I was going to go back to graduate school or law school. I was studying for LSATs. I was preparing to have a real backup plan because I didn't know that this would work.

And I was skeptical and doubtful. But in that year, I booked my very first independent film called Our Song, which was nominated for the Cassavetes Award at the Independent Film Festival. And I also booked Save the Last Dance within that first year. And Save the Last Dance, if I said, What's the Breakthrough? Is that the one?

I think so. I mean, maybe. I think we have this desire to believe in kind of the overnight success of artists, but I think it's more come in ways. I think I've been really lucky to be a part of very special productions, Save the Last Dance and Ray and Last King of Scotland. Each of those films kind of moved the needle for me in different ways.

And then you mentioned, of course, scandal. Changed everything in your life. Scandal changed everything. How did that role first come up for you? Yeah. And what did you think when you read Olivia Pope? It was interesting. Making the choice to do TV was an intense one because up until that point in my career,

I had really been able to be a working, successful character actor, where I was kind of disappearing into these different roles. And nobody really connected that the African lady from Last King of Scotland was Chenille from Save the Last Dance. Like people weren't putting those pieces together. So I was able to pay my bills, but have a pretty normal life. and television changes all of that. When I read the script, I loved her.

I actually had the experience of throwing the script across the room at some point because I just thought, like, these writers know me. Like, this feels like it was written for me. So that's not throwing in anger. No, it was like I couldn't believe how right it felt for me. But I still had to audition and get the part.

And so how did that change your life? I mean, you talked about being a character, actor, but like, now everybody knows you. Yeah. There's no denying that when you walk down the street. There's no more anonymity. How did you handle that level of celebrity with the popularity of the show? I think luckily right before then I had made some decisions about privacy and wanting to,

partly because I liked being a character actor and I liked people being able to suspend disbelief and believe that I'm other people. And so I didn't, I decided not to talk about my personal life that much in the press. and because I'd have some experiences where I had talked about my personal life and it didn't feel good. And so that became more and more challenging with the successive scandal. But I really tried to still navigate it within that framework. That must be hard to do on some level, though, right? I mean, important and critical, and I totally respect it.

But is it hard to, I'm sure there's some temptation to share. Here we are. We're a happy family. I have moments where, like, I take pictures or very, videos of one of my three amazing kids and I want to like post it online and I tend to just like send it to my parents or to my shrink instead. I'm like my kids are so cute and I don't want to post about them so look at how cute they are. Your shrink is your Instagram it turns out. I have a private Instagram to my shrink and he loves it. It's better anyway. It's better anyway. No

judgment there's truly. There's no judgment. It's not great when I get parenting feedback incidentally based on like something he heard me say in the background of the video. You open yourself up to that. Yes, exactly. Also I want to ask you about some things you have coming up. Yeah. Like the Reese Project sounds absolutely incredible. Yeah, it's called Little Fires Everywhere.

It's based on Celestine's best-selling novel. It's such a beautiful novel, and both Reese and I tried our best to do it justice. The scripts are fantastic, and we play really different women, different kinds of moms. and it's a lot about kind of how we define what it is to be a good mother and who gets to be a good mother and how we let go of our kids and what it feels like when our kids identify with a different mother other than yourself.

And it's really a very, very special project. Am I right that you and Reese, and this is an observation from a distance, are similar in that you're smart and driven and you're like produce and direct and do all the things and you want to have control of the outcome? That's really sweet. I think that as a compliment because she is a really, she's a force. Yeah. But yeah, even my dad said that. My dad was visiting us on set and he said, you guys are so similar.

You're like photo negatives of each other, the black and white version or maybe the north and south version of each other's. Yeah. There's a lot of ambition, but also ambition for good. And we both believe that ambition is not a bad word, that it's okay to be driven and to want to create not only opportunity for ourselves, but for all the other artists and artisans that get to be employed when we produce content in the world. So what do your parents think now? The skeptics early when you said, I want to be an actor and look at you now. What do they say?

It's so funny when I was one of the few times that I've been nominated for an Emmy, I brought my parents with me to the ceremony. And I waited until my mom was slicing into her filet mignon at the governor's ball. And I was like, starving artist? How you doing? Who's starving now? That was always her thing. Like, I just don't want you to be a starving artist, which of course, at the time I thought was so unsupportive. But now, you know, I'm a mom. I get it. You just, you want your kids to be safe in the world. You want them to be okay, which again, you know, is what American son is about. It's just that universal parental desire for your kids to be safe. Stick around to hear more from Carrie Washington on the Sunday Sit Down podcast, including what her childhood was like growing up in the Bronx and the responsibility she felt after she was cast as the first black female lead in a network drama in 40 years on the hit show scandal.

Welcome back to the Sunday Sit Down podcast. Now more of my conversation with Carrie Washington. Growing up in the Bronx, what were you like as a kid? Carrie from the block, don't be fooled by the rocks that I've got. I was, if you can imagine, a very dramatic child. I'm shocked, Carrie. I'm shocked. I had, my paternal grandmother used to call me Sarah Bernhardt because I was so dramatic. And she's a classic actress at the stage.

And my mom, you know, God help her, my mother is a very stoic person. And she, because she's an educator, she thought, I have to give this kid a person. place to have all of these feelings and it's not my living room. So I'm going to put her in children's theater company and she really allowed me to kind of express myself through these local community children's theater programs, happy medium in the Bronx and I work with Tadda here in New York, which is a great children's theater company. And that allowed my mom to live in her safe zone emotionally but also allowed me to be this expressive walking id. Isn't that great mother work, which is to say, like, I don't totally get this, but I know she loves it, so let's have her do it.

She is really, I mean, I think my mom inspires me so much as a mother, because she really, she's always met me where I am to the best of her ability. And it probably comes from decades and decades of being a teacher and then training teachers that she's dealt with every kind of kid there is in the world. And so she was really able to see me for who I am and help foster. And then regret it later when I wanted to make a career out of it. But now she's happy. She's good. She had the fillet at the governor's ball and she's good to go. She's not hungry and neither am I.

Well, you take Olivia Pope, for example, right? That was it 38 years or something? And I was, I think, 34 at the time. So in my lifetime, I had never seen a black woman as the lead of a network trauma. Wow. So what did that mean to you? Did you think about that? And you have to put that away while you're putting in it?

I did. I thought about it because I got asked about. it a lot by you people but um right and by that I mean journalists but also but also I did think about it because I knew that if scandal wasn't a success it could be another 40 years before a black woman had the opportunity to be the lead of a network drama and so I wanted to get it right and I knew I could couldn't control eyeballs. You know, you can't control ratings.

There was nothing I could do to make people watch. But I did as much as I could to make sure that the show was a show I could be proud of, that we were reaching for excellence, that we were putting in the extra hours and the extra effort as a company, that I was treating our casting crew with as much dignity and respect as possible, that I was going above and beyond in the marketing and PR for the show, that I was doing everything I could to try to lead us towards success and then that we could be a success because in that success came empire and came how to get away with murder and came Quantico and came Station 19, all of these shows with women of color in the number

one position. And it's not because of me, it's because audiences showed up. You know, you guys showed up and you watched and what was being talked about as a literal risk by the network by putting me as the first person on the call sheet became commonplace at every network. That's got to feel good. Yeah, but again, I don't take credit. I really think, like, audiences were ready, and you guys tuned in,

and you made scandal a global phenomenon. And so, you know, the people showed up, and then the marketplace was forced to meet that need. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching it, for having me on. Now the chicken parm. Please. My big thanks to Kerry Washington,

for a great conversation and a little lunch too. You can catch her latest film American Sun streaming now on Netflix. And my thanks as always to all of you for tuning in this week. If you want to hear more of the full-length conversations with my guests every week, be sure to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. And don't forget to tune in to Sunday today every weekend on NBC. I'm Willie Geist. We'll see you right back here next week on the Sunday Sit Down podcast.