I watched American Son tonight, and let's keep it 100. Kerry Washington be acting her ass off. Excuse my vernacular, but this hour and a half Broadway play-turned-Netflix film is sure to get you all the way in your feelings and recently, Kerry sat down with Variety to discuss exactly how she tapped into the character that had us crying like our son went missing, too. In her first on-screen project since Scandal, Kerry plays a concerned mother named Kendra who is desperate to learn the whereabouts of her 18-year-old son who never returned home after a night out with friends.
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As black women, we have every damned reason to be mad, especially in a police station full of people who don't seem to give a damn about black lives and Kerry explained that this cycle of misunderstanding is one that she knows well. She explained:
"I understood her so clearly. I've been that black woman who's having big feelings in an appropriate moment and being stereotyped to be something other. And I wanted to bring her to our canon. I wanted to embody her [because] — even though I know her and I've been her — I hadn't seen her."
According to Kerry, her passion for bringing the play to the streaming platform came out of both necessity and a sense of obligation. Anyone who's ever been on Broadway knows that tickets don't come cheap, and the 42-year-old actress says that American Son is a story that should be available to every country in the world.
"So I felt that responsibility — a helpless responsibility, because there was nothing I could do to make people turn on their televisions. I could make sure that we were doing the work and work that I was proud of, but the numbers of eyeballs that watched it, I didn't have any control over that."
Her latest role is only one of the many iconic characters that Kerry has portrayed on the big screen, and with great power comes great responsibility. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, in the interview, the mother-of-three said that during her time as Olivia Pope, that weight sometimes became too much to bear:
"There are various moments in my career and in my life where I've felt like 'the face of the race.' The whole beginning of Scandal, every headline was 'This hasn't happened in 40 years.' And so there was a deep understanding that if Scandal didn't work, it might be another 40 years before we had a [network drama] with a black woman as the lead."
While her legendary track record has proven to be a burden at times, it has also been a well-deserved blessing for Black women in the film industry.
"But in the success of 'Scandal,' you then have Viola [Davis] and you have Taraji [P. Henson]. And now we have an understanding that one person cannot hold the responsibility of being 'the face of the race' because we are not a monolith. We are diverse and inclusive within our own. And so you have less pressure on each of us to be the face of anything, because together we are beginning to reflect and be the embodiment of the multitudes of beauty that black womanhood is."
To read the full interview, click here!
Featured image by Tinseltown / Shutterstock.com
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While speaking to xoNecole, Eva shares that she’s a lot like the beloved 1994 character in many ways. “Lyric is so me. She's the odd flower. A flower nonetheless, but definitely not a peony,” she tells us.
“She's not the average flower you see presented, and so she reminds me of myself. I'm a sunflower, beautiful, but different. And what I loved about her character then, and even more so now, is that she was very sure of herself.
"Sure of what she wanted in life and okay to sacrifice her moments right now, to get what she knew she deserved later. And that is me. I'm not an instant gratification kind of a person. I am a long game. I'm not a sprinter, I'm a marathon.
America first fell in love with Eva when she graced our screens on cycle 3 of America’s Next Top Model in 2004, which she emerged as the winner. Since then, she's ventured into different avenues, from acting on various TV series like House of Payne to starring on Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Je-Caryous Johnson Entertainment
Eva praises her castmates and the play’s producer, Je’Caryous for her positive experience. “You know what? Je’Caryous fuels my audacity car daily, ‘cause I consider myself an extremely audacious woman, and I believe in what I know, even if no one else knows it, because God gave it to me. So I know what I know. That is who Je’Caryous is.”
But the mom of three isn’t the only one in the family who enjoys acting. Eva reveals her daughter Marley has also caught the acting bug.
“It is the most adorable thing you can ever see. She’s got a part in her school play. She's in her chorus, and she loves it,” she says. “I don't know if she loves it, because it's like, mommy does it, so maybe I should do it, but there is something about her.”
Overall, Eva hopes that her contribution to the role and the play as a whole serves as motivation for others to reach for the stars.
“I want them to walk out with hope. I want them to re-vision their dreams. Whatever they were. Whatever they are. To re-see them and then have that thing inside of them say, ‘You know what? I'm going to do that. Whatever dream you put on the back burner, go pick it up.
"Whatever dream you've accomplished, make a new dream, but continue to reach for the stars. Continue to reach for what is beyond what people say we can do, especially as [a] Black collective but especially as Black women. When it comes to us and who we are and what we accept and what we're worth, it's not about having seen it before. It's about knowing that I deserve it.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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