We Love Kerry Washington

Kerry Washington should play the sexpot more often. Just look at her rock that red dress in I Think I Love My Wife. She plays a temptress to Chris Rock's married man, and boy is she tempting. Somehow we didn't see that side of her as Ray Charles' wife or Mrs. Idi Amin. She played up the flirt in person too, though there was no temptation. Temptation implies that you have a chance with her.

CraveOnline: Do you still have that red dress?

Kerry Washington: No. It's funny, I always, always keep something from a character that I play, usually an item of wardrobe or a piece of furniture from that house that my character lived in. Like on Little Man, I have these fantastic Prada boots that I kept. Last King of Scotland, it's this beautiful Ugandan vase. For this movie, I kept nothing. Nothing. I didn't want to take Nikki home with me.

CraveOnline: What is your personal style?

Kerry Washington: This is Simone and she's a new designer, a new LA designer. I just did an interview with Women's Ware Daily in New York last week and they were saying, "It's so weird to see you in this movie because on the red carpet, you're always so classic and classy and sophisticated and you're not really that in this movie" until the end when I'm off to get married. Yeah, so it's totally a change for me.

Kerry Washington: Why did you want to play her?

CraveOnline: I feel like I have been auditioning for this role for about four years because he's been working on the script for about five or six years and four years ago he did a table read of the script and he called me up because we had done Bad Company at that point. We were friends and he said, "Will you come and read the Brenda role." I said, "Sure, yeah, whatever, just send it to me, I'll meet you there, I'll read the role." I hadn't read it before the reading and so while we were sitting there reading it out loud, I was completely taken with the Nikki character. I was like, "Oh my goodness, who is this girl?" She became sort of this puzzle that I had to crack. I really was so taken with how well she was written and how complicated she was and how powerful she was yet completely insecure. I just loved her from the first time I heard the character out loud. So I went up to Chris after the reading and I said, "The project's really great. When you get this made because I know you will, would you consider me for the role of Nikki?" And he laughed at me. So it has taken a very long time for him to be open to that idea.

CraveOnline: But you didn't want to take her home?

Kerry Washington: Because Nikki was hard for me. She was hard for me. Like I don't wear clothes like that, I don't walk in the world in the way that she does so I was happy to leave her to the film history Smithsonian Institute one day. I came to a crossroads with Nikki where I was really having a hard time. It was harder than I thought it was going to be for a week. I started thinking that I am a very, very independent, self-reliant woman. Some might say to a fault, like my assistant. But I very much believe in the ability to take care of myself. It's very important to me. And it occurred to me one day in my actor's homework that Nikki is almost the exact opposite of that, that she actually thinks that she's completely incapable of taking care of herself. And furthermore thinks that a man has to take care of her. So I thought, well, okay. To make it totally opposite from my childhood, I decided that Nikki, unlike me because I literally have the almost exact opposite experience, that Nikki has always been from the moment she was born, the prettiest girl in the room. She's always been Daddy's Little Girl, she's always had the prettiest dresses, she's always been absolutely beautiful. So people have always fawned over her, they've always given her anything she wanted and she's never been forced to be self-reliant. There was a point in my life where I was like, "All right, well, it's not going to be about boys. I guess it's going to be about books." Or like "I'm not going to be the prettiest girl in the room, so I guess I better have a personality." I don't think that Nikki ever had that bridge to cross. So I think she grew up thinking of her physical appearance as a currency to be taken care of. Like if I'm pretty, then I will get taken care of. If I can be sexy enough, then I will be safe. Now she's at a point in her life where it hasn't quite panned out the way that she hoped, so she's kind of desperate for somebody to love her and take care of her.

CraveOnline: Are you saying you've never wielded power over men like Nikki?

Kerry Washington: What do you think I'm doing right now? [joking] It's a hard question to answer because I'm in a business where so much of what I do is dependent on my physical appearance. So it's not as if I walk around in a paper bag and I'm like, "No, I really only operate on a spiritual level." I definitely know that my appearance is important to what I do. But I also think that it's unfortunate in society that we sort of treat "attractive" people better than "non-attractive" people or that we have a bias towards how people should behave or what kind of gifts they should receive in the world because of how they look. So I try not to buy into that by using what I have or by doing that to other people.

CraveOnline: Is Nikki a realistic portrayal of a single girl or a scarier version?

Kerry Washington: I don't think you can say that single women as a population are any one thing. I think what I like about her is that she's very much a fully realized three dimensional complicated human being all to her own. She doesn't represent women, she doesn't represent single women, she doesn't represent black women, she doesn't represent New Yorkers. She represents Nikki Tru. There are people in the world like Nikki Tru but she doesn't stand for anything I think other than a woman with some issues, some complicated things she's dealing with, somebody who's really afraid and really wants to be taken care of.

CraveOnline: Do women and men see this movie differently?

Kerry Washington: I'm sorry, I know this might sound pat but I think everyone will see this movie differently. I think there will be women who see it differently than other women, men who see it differently than other men, but I think it's a fantastic opportunity for dialogue. We've been doing screenings all over the country with Q&A's afterward and it's so fun to talk to the audience after the movie because everyone has so much to say. People hate Nikki or they hate the wife or they hate the Chris character. People are so excited about it, and I think the film is very similar to Chris's stand-up in that he's going places where people don't usually go. He's talking about stuff that people don't usually talk about and doing it in a way that's poignant and provocative and political and ground breaking and yet hilarious and charming. So I think it's a great movie for couples to see together because these are issues that you probably should talk about and probably should be discussed. It's much easier to talk about Nikki and Brenda and Richard than it is to talk about you and me in relationships. So I think it's a great film for people to see. I think it should come with a study guide. I don't know who would write it.

CraveOnline: What do you think of the tabloids taking this film as an indication that the Rock marriage is in trouble?

Kerry Washington: I try to let that kind of stuff be more the other actor's journey because I have my own life. All I can really do is do my job and show up and do what I think is the truth of the character. Whatever's going on in his world is his responsibility so I try not to worry about it too much. And I also always have conversations about boundaries with my actors to say, "Let me know what you're uncomfortable with. We should talk about how we're going to make that panty scene look like you're taking off my panties when you're not really taking off my panties." You have those discussions so you get the uncomfortable stuff out of the way. Then you can just do the work.

CraveOnline: How do you take off panties without taking them off?

Kerry Washington: I don't remember.

CraveOnline: How is your romance with The Thing going? Chiklis says they're saving something really big for part 3.

Kerry Washington: Did he tell you that? That's exciting. News to me.

Kerry Washington: I can't tell you that. I would get in a lot of trouble if I told you. Seriously, they print out scripts with our names on them so that if anything ever leaked, they know exactly where it came from. It's really crazy.

Kerry Washington: We'll see. We'll see. I think I'm also, we'll see because in the first one there was a lot more that didn't wind up in the film so I'm curious to see how much winds up in this one.

CraveOnline: Chiklis also said he could slip in and out of the costume this time?

Kerry Washington: Much easier.

CraveOnline: Did you get to hang out with him as Michael?

Kerry Washington: More. More than ever before, yeah, definitely which was fun because I like Michael a lot. He's a sweetie.

CraveOnline: You did Ray before Fantastic Four. Did you get any tips on playing blind from Jamie Foxx?

Kerry Washington: No, I just basically did what he does. I was like, "I don't have to do research. I'll just do what Jamie did."

Kerry Washington: No.

CraveOnline: When you are, how would you deal with declining sex in a relationship?

Kerry Washington: Why would you wish that on me? I'm not married, I'm not thinking about marriage, I don't know if I'll ever be married to be honest with you.

CraveOnline: Why?

Kerry Washington: I don't know. We'll see. I really like my life right now so we'll see.

CraveOnline: Is marriage a scary thing to you? 

Kerry Washington: I would like to revise my statement. It's not that I'm not interested in marriage. I just don't know if I'll ever get married. That's all I'm saying. I don't know. It's not scary. I'm one of the very rare people whose parents are still married after 35 years so it's not scary. It's just a choice. 

CraveOnline: Do you think it's wrong that we assume you should get married eventually? 

Kerry Washington: It's an interesting fascination in our society and culture. The assumption is that you're going to. It's like, really? Because it was invented for this very specific property rights kind of thing that doesn't really exist anymore, so it's just an interesting thing to think about. I think there are so many beautiful things about it. I feel like I'm sort of married to my job right now, which I like. We're having a good time, me and my job. 

CraveOnline: How do you stay focused? 

Kerry Washington: I have a really good therapist who I talk to even on the phone when I'm on location. And exercise is really grounding for me. I work out a lot. That really helps me. It's sort of a ritual that I can have wherever I am. I go in and out of phases of meditating. Sometimes I'm really good about it. Sometimes not so much.
 
CraveOnline: So you keep to yourself? 

Kerry Washington: Kind of. I have really close friends though. Who knows? I think I'm also, I just turned 30 so these questions are hard because I'm like I don't know who I am. Who knows who I'm going to be next week? It feels like such a huge kind of open time in my life. I have no idea who I'm going to be a week from now. 

CraveOnline: Have you congratulated Forrest Whitaker on the Oscar yet? 

Kerry Washington: Yes, I saw him that night and I saw him on Friday at the NAACP awards. Just beaming. We were getting nervous because as an Academy member, I think I would have been torn. Peter O'Toole's probably not going to do another film and to have the body of work that he has, because we all know it's never about that performance. It's the actor we're choosing to acknowledge this year. But I'm glad he won because now it means that if you work with me, you win awards. That's the rumor.