Crave Online: How many people have asked about your fake package today?

 

Kerry Washington: [Laughs] I’ll say you’re not the first.

 

Crave Online: What have been the best questions?

 

Kerry Washington: What was it? Everybody wants to know what was it? It’s movie magic. I can’t tell you everything. I can just tell you it wasn’t really mine. That’s what I’ll tell you.

 

Crave Online: Did you have to de-Femme your features?

Kerry Washington: That’s such an interesting way to put it. I don't know if I would put it that way. There is this complicated issue of portraying somebody who is born a woman but whose anatomy has in some ways betrayed them. So there is the complicated issue of how you articulate that physically so there were lots of meetings and discussions and explorations about how to do that.

 

Crave Online: What was your experience in the trans gender community?

 

Kerry Washington: I love research. I really thrive on doing research to prepare for a character. It’s one of my favorite parts of acting so I do a lot of reading and watching documentaries and interviewing experts in whatever field it is I’m studying in preparation. I also was very lucky that I found this amazing woman named Valerie Spencer who’s a trans woman who became my consultant on the film.

 

Crave Online: What was the one thing she wanted to make sure you got right?

 

Kerry Washington: I don't think I could say that there was one thing. It’s really a community and so any anthropologist will tell you there are so many specific details that make up membership to that community. So it was really about trying to absorb as much of that as possible, but she was very generous with her life. We spent a lot of time together and we hung out and went to dinner and I went to church with her. She brought me into the community so I was able to meet a lot of trans women.

 

Crave Online: What’s your favorite thing about Marybeth?

 

Kerry Washington: I guess I think it was really brave and courageous for Buddy [Giovinazzo] to take this person that is a disenfranchised member of society. They call her a freak in the movie and he took this person and made her the emotional center of the film. That was the thing that really drew me to her, that she’s this person that we normally think of in sort of stereotypical frameworks, but she became this really complicated, layered, accessible human being. I think that’s what drew me to playing her.

 

Crave Online: What do you think draws us as an audience that draws us to films about people in horrible situations, that we want to experience them?

 

Kerry Washington: I think in some ways, we come from a long tradition. As human beings, we’ve always had traditions of storytelling, whether it was sitting around a fire in prehistoric times, but we’ve always told stories. In some ways, filmmakers carry the new tradition of storytelling. We have a lot to learn as human beings from watching stories that reflect our happiest times but also watching stories that reflect our darkest moments. Both of those conditions allow us to move closer to the full spectrum of who we are as people.

 

Crave Online: You do get in moods where you want to see Cracktown instead of Star Trek.

 

Kerry Washington: That’s right. You know, I love When Harry Met Sally as much as I love Schindler’s List. They speak to different parts of my truth as a human being.

 

Crave Online: How do you work up to a rage, a real yelling, screaming, crying scene?

 

Kerry Washington: Oh, it’s always different. I have different tools in my toolbox. The funny thing about being an actor is that somebody who plays the violin or plays the piano, their instrument is fairly stable. You do have to tune a piano and tune your string instruments, but as a person, I am my instrument, as an actor. So you have to be constantly figuring out how to bring out the best in yourself as an actor. I change all the time. We all change all the time so it’s going to take a very different thing today to get me to a screaming, raging moment than it would have three years ago in my life because I’m different. It’s an interesting question. You really have to stay willing to work on yourself and work on your skills as an actor.