Kerry Washington Says Her Career Made This Major Pivot After Scandal & We’re Only Now Seeing It

While Kerry Washington might forever be known as the fearless Olivia Pope in Scandal, the actress has been a part of many exciting projects since, including the upcoming action-packed movie Shadow Force. But while all those movies and TV shows continue to consolidate her as a major Hollywood powerhouse, Washington only recently revealed a surprising throughline in most of them.

“I became a mom during my years on Scandal, but I was never able to kind of explore themes of parenting on the show because Olivia Pope made the very fine decision to not be a mom, I totally respect her choice,” Washington tells SheKnows. “It’s been thrilling for me post-Scandal to be able to explore lots of themes of parenting in the work that I’ve done, whether it’s in Little Fires Everywhere or Animals with Ben Affleck.”

In Little Fires Everywhere, Washington starred opposite Reese Witherspoon as single mom Mia as she moves into a small town in the suburbs as shakes up the life of the picture-perfect Richardson family. In Animals, a movie that’s yet to be released, she plays a wife to a mayoral candidate (Affleck) whose son has been kidnapped and is being held for ransom.

“I’m drawn to how parenting impacts our decisions,” Washington adds.

In Shadow Force, Washington plays a secret agent who broke the rules after falling in love with a fellow spy (played by French actor Omar Sy) and welcoming a son together (Jahleel Kamara).

“I had been looking for an opportunity to do more action, because I really love doing that kind of work, but this film really stood out for me, because, yes, it is a big, splashy action adventure, but at its heart, it’s really about love of family and about being a parent who will do anything and everything to protect what matters most to you, which is your child and your family,” Washington says.

Playing a mom onscreen was made even easier when she met her onscreen son in Shadow Force. “Jahleel is a superstar,” she says of the child actor. “I feel like he steals the movie [in] every scene he’s in.”

“One of the first things that Omar and I did when he signed on to the film was read with all these actors to cast that role,” she remembers. “And we met Jahleel, we were like, ‘This is it!'”

“How could you not love him?” she adds. “He’s just so adorable and so talented and so smart.”

In the movie, in between intense heart-racing action scenes, the family of three shares some sweet moments, like dancing and singing to Lionel Richie in the car.

“I feel like music for a lot of families is a way for you to connect and bond, and Lionel Richie is like the soundtrack of our lives for this family, Lionel is attached to all of our greatest memories and moments,” she adds. “And I was joking with Lionel recently on the phone. I was like, ‘You’re like the fourth member of our family. It’s like a mom, dad, a son, and like our cousin Lionel, who’s just with us all the time.’ So music can be a really special way to connect.”

In her family, Washington, who’s a mom to daughter Isabelle, born in 2014, a son named Caleb, born in 2016 and a stepmom to her husband Nnamdi Asomugha’s teenage daughter, jamming out in the car is also a favorite activity.

“We also sometimes will take turns where, like, you can pick any song you want,” she says. “We kind of rotate around the car, which is a fun thing to do.”

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Lastly, we asked Washington what’s harder: learning French in front of Sy or getting ready for some impressive fight scenes.

“Luckily, I wasn’t just learning French in front of Omar, but with Omar, he was super supportive,” she says. “A lot of times, he would say the words to me, and I would say them right back to him, like a parrot, because I was like, ‘You have to help me. This is not a language that I speak.’ He was great and so supportive.”

“So the fight sequences were much harder,” she admits. “They took a lot more time to learn, but they were it was all fun.”

“Every second of making this film was really so hard but joyful,” she says. Shadow Force hits theaters on May 9.

Before you go, click here to see more movies that are honest about motherhood.