Kerry Washington was once wary of using Twitter, but those days are long done!
The Scandal star looks stunning on the cover of Net-A-Porter.com's The EDIT, and in the accompanying feature, she admits that nothing—not even childbirth—will stop her from live-tweeting the ABC series.
"Every Thursday within three weeks of my [daughter Isabelle's] due date, I loaded up pre-tweets based on the episodes and what I would want to say. I tweeted in the very early stages of my labor. I figured that if I went completely silent on social media, then people would know I was in the hospital!" she says.
That sounds like the kind of covert operation that Olivia Pope might oversee!
One of the things Washington loves most about Shonda Rhimes' series is that the main character isn't perfect. "She never wrote Olivia Pope to be a role model; she wrote her to be a human being, and part of what people identify with so much is that she is conflicted," she says of Olivia, whose love triangle makes for must-see TV. "In some ways, she's so aspirational—you want to walk like her, dress like her, command attention like her and control a situation like her. In other ways, she's a warning of what not to be." The biggest difference between herself and Olivia, Washington, 38, jokes, is "a lot of therapy!"
"Not to say that I have it all together, but I think I have a little bit more awareness about my behavior patterns and I do the work it takes to get out of them," says the star, who's played the part since 2012.
Scandal is one of ABC's biggest hits, and it will very likely return for a fifth season. The series will have to end eventually, and Washington hopes Olivia stands the test of time. "I hope people remember her as a complicated, fully realized human being; she's not a stereotype and she's not an accessory. I think that it's important for women to know, in film and in TV and in life, that you can be the lead of your own story. I hope she's remembered for that: as somebody who is the driving force of her own life," she says.
If she weren't an actress, Washington "would be involved in politics, butt I would probably be teaching."
"It's what my mother did, so it's in my blood. My mother is so badass. I watched her get her doctorate when I was a little girl: she got that around the same time that I graduated from kindergarten so we both had caps and gowns," says the Django Unchained actress, who was born and raised in New York City. "I grew up with a belief in the importance of a woman's mind and that has been a real gift for me."
To see the full interview with Kerry Washington, read Net-A-Porter's The EDIT.