Kerry Washington Lets Perfect Be Imperfect

12 October, 2026

Photos Rachell Smith

Words Annabel Brog

Styling Rob & Mariel

Kerry Washington’s resume is gold standard, embracing Oscar winning films like Django Unchained, Ray, and The Last King of Scotland, beloved TV binge-fests including Little Fires Everywhere and Scandal, in which she played iconic Olivia Pope for seven series, and a memoir, Thicker Than Water. Her new film Animals, directed by and co-starring Ben Affleck, manages to deliver both at once — popcorn thriller and a fraught depiction of a marriage fracturing under untenable pressure. In this interview, Kerry talks about shedding her body hang-ups, the real cost of being a producer in an industry not built for her, Hollywood's invisible prejudice, where she actually draws the line on AI, and why she has to play at being Tom Hanks. She also opens up about the advice from Chris Rock she's never forgotten, the on-set ritual she now passes down to a new generation of actresses, and why, off-screen, she's drawn to the same thing she explores on it — what happens when people finally stop performing and tell each other the truth.

Gold Flex’it ring with diamonds, by FOPE, Dress MICHAEL LO SORDO,

In Animals, Abi maintains a carefully constructed “perfect” public image while inside she is unravelling. As a woman in the public eye, have you had experience of that?

Yes, but I think there’s something very universal about it. We all have to perform various roles in our lives and try to bring the version of ourselves that’s most appropriate to the situation. If you have children you understand that you could be having a shit day but that doesn’t have to become your children’s day. It’s learning how to honor yourself and also have healthy boundaries.

Do you have a go-to trick where you’re out in public and you’re feeling all the feels, but want to keep your private self private?

Sunglasses are very helpful. But also I’m trying to be a little bit more patient with myself. My husband [former NFL player Nnamdi Asomugha] and I talk about this, because as an athlete he dealt with this a lot as well. So sometimes, if I’m having a moment and somebody’s like “Can I have a selfie?” the answer is no. But I try to express it so people don’t think that it’s their fault, so I might say, “I’m a little bit tired today but thank you so much for what you’re saying.”

Dress MICHAEL LO SORDO,

Was there a vision of perfect you had as a younger woman that you’ve let go of over the years?

Oh yeah, for sure. Two things happened as I matured: re-centering who gets to define what a perfect looks like, and grappling with the idea of perfection itself – to let perfect be imperfect. When I was younger I let ‘perfect’ be defined by other people’s ideas of me rather than of my own desires and sense of self. I reached for a cultural idea of perfection that had a lot to do with thinness, numbers on a scale, a label size and fitting into an outfit on a runway. I’ve really shifted away from that, to perfect being about health and wellness and strength and flexibility. I care very much about appearance, but more about posture and strength and less about sample size and numbers on a scale.

Dress ALBERTA FERRETTI.

Animals revolves around a couple with wildly different stress responses and parenting styles. Mark thinks aggression is going to solve everything. Abi engages her heart. Is this something you have dealt with in daily life?

[Laughs] I’m not going to talk about my marriage, because it’s great and I like to protect it, but I thought about my parents a lot when I was making this film – the unspoken pain that doesn’t get addressed that builds on itself. That’s a bit what my memoir [Thicker Than Water] is about – how much healing we were able to have once we started speaking the truth to each other. I didn’t think as much about my own marriage [while filming Animals] which is a blessing.

Do you watch Couples Therapy, are you obsessed with Orna Guralnik?

Uh huh. UH HUH [laughs]. I’m also a huge Esther Perel fan. I mean I watch Couples Therapy, I go to couples therapy, there’s another show, Blue Therapy – it’s mostly couples of color in England, and it’s so good. I love this stuff, it’s so fascinating.

Gold Flex’it ring with diamonds and earrings, by FOPE, Dress CULT GAIA.

You play incredible women created by insightful writers. Do you ever take life lessons from them, thinkL “She’s fierce, I’ll try that myself”?

Every time. If I’m lucky, I’m taking on a character at a crossroads when she’s learning something enormous, and I weave her lessons into my soul. Then I pick up another character who teaches me incredible life lessons about who I want to be or who I don’t want to be, and again I get to weave in all of her learning, express something that I need to express through her, then put her down. When I first started playing Olivia Pope I understood what power looked like and how it moved through the world, but I hadn’t really stepped into my own power. She taught me how to be a leader in my life, in my home, in my career, in activism, she taught me how to have my name on that front door.

Dress SAINT LAURENT FROM ARCHIVE X YANA

You once said all actors are activists. Has activism cost you anything professionally?

There have been costs that I know about, I have lived through very challenging dynamics and decisions that haven’t gone my way because of things I’ve said. But I always remember something that Chris Rock said to me early in my career. He said: “The most racist decisions made about your career, and the most sexist decisions made about your career, you won't even know about them because you’re not in the room.” So I’m sure there's been an invisible cost too.

Corset MUGLER FROM ARCHIVE X YANA.

You’ve talked about how being a producer gives you lots of agency, but the producer is about the business and the bottom line, and acting is about the art. Have you ever had to make a decision between one or the other?

Yes all the time, but as a woman and as a person of color, producing has allowed me to do so much more than I ever would have been able to do. The cost of that is that I have to wear multiple hats, but I don’t have the privilege to say I just want to act. This business is not built for me in that way, if that was the choice I made I wouldn’t work. I'm really lucky that these magical, lightning in a bottle moments come along – like Animals or School for Good and Evil – with filmmakers who allow me to have agency and a voice even though I wasn’t a producer. But if I’m not a producer, there’s no Little Fires Everywhere, there’s no Imperfect Women. If I’m not producing what am I doing? One movie every four years? But it’s also a privilege that I get to do it – there are white men who also, decades ago, said “In order to do the work I want to do I'm gonna have to produce”. So to have the career I want to have, I’ll have to be Tom Hanks. But also what a gift – I get to be Tom Hanks.

Gold Flex’it bracelets and rings, all by FOPE, Dress JEAN PAUL GAULTIER X LA PERLA FROM ARCHIVE X YANA.

Did you know Ben before you made Animals?

We knew each other casually, but we didn’t know each other very well. I had heard how wonderful it was to work with him as a director and I thought it would be fun to take this on with him. And it was really fun for me. I knew that this was an environment where I could bring all of myself to the project even though I wasn’t a producer.

Were there issues you dealt with early in your career that younger actresses today won’t have to face?

If that is the case, it will be because more of us are doing what we’re doing. Django Unchained was a very difficult movie to make; Pilar Sivone, who now runs my production company, was a producer on it, and one of the maybe two people who would come to me every day, look me dead in my eye and say: “Are you okay? What do you need?” Now I get to do that. I just finished shooting a film, An Innocent Girl, that has three leads and one of them is a young woman. Because I’m an executive producer, I was able to look at Chloe [East] and say: “Are you okay? What do you need?” So if the experience is shifting it’s not because we’ve fixed it, it’s because we’re continuing to do the work.

Dress SAINT LAURENT FROM ARCHIVE X YANA

You joined the actor’s strike about AI. Do you have a line where AI is helpful and what it shouldn’t touch creativity?

It’s such a moving target it’s difficult to have a line, but we really have to keep our eye on consent and compensation: Making sure that people know that AI is in there, and that people have given permission to use our likeness, our image, our words, our voices. And that there’s real compensation. That’s a very tricky thing, when the [AI] model is just like gobbling up everything that’s out there.

Animals is available to stream now on Netflix.