Kerry Washington's name is ubiquitous with the term superstar. Her iconic characters have ranged from a fashion diva (Save The Last Dance), a protective mother (Little Fires Everywhere), and a political fixer (Scandal). She has continued to wow us with iconic roles throughout her career. Watch above to see Washington discuss her characters and their memorable fashion.
Director: Stephanie Romero
Cinematographer: Amusement Productions
Editor: Jeremy Tanksley
Sound Mixer: Dennis Schweitzer
Production Assistant: Zeinab Gregorio
Fashion Director: Lauren Eggertsen
Stylist: Ashley Furnival
Styling Assistant: Priscilla Langdon
Makeup Artist: Allan Avendaño
Makeup Artist Assistant: Ruby Vo
Manicurist: Zola Ganzorigt
Prop Stylists: Sean Stronger, Alexandra Floro
Executive Director, Creative: Alexa Wiley
Executive Director, Entertainment: Jessica Baker
VP, Social: MacKenzie Green
Director: Stephanie Romero
Cinematographer: Amusement Productions
Editor: Jeremy Tanksley
Sound Mixer: Dennis Schweitzer
Production Assistant: Zeinab Gregorio
Fashion Director: Lauren Eggertsen
Stylist: Ashley Furnival
Styling Assistant: Priscilla Langdon
Makeup Artist: Allan Avendaño
Makeup Artist Assistant: Ruby Vo
Manicurist: Zola Ganzorigt
Prop Stylists: Sean Stronger, Alexandra Floro
Executive Director, Creative: Alexa Wiley
Executive Director, Entertainment: Jessica Baker
VP, Social: MacKenzie Green
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, I'm Keri Washington, and today we're going behind the looks.
00:16This is Save the Last Dance.
00:18I worked with an amazing costume designer named Sandra Hernandez.
00:22She really was into the fact that Chenille, my character, wanted to be a fashion designer.
00:28So we really played with using clothes that Chenille had purchased and kind of repurposed.
00:34So there was a lot of kind of mismatched patterns and, you know, we mixed different clothing items
00:41and sewed them together, like very funky, very cool, very unique, courageous and bold.
00:47She's very, very, very into fashion, Chenille.
00:50And that was very fun for me because at the time I was an actor living in New York
00:55with very, very little money. I was working at a restaurant.
00:58So being able to step into Chenille's fashion was like a dream come true and so fun
01:05and much more adventurous than how I dressed in my everyday.
01:09I do remember a lot of the dances from Save the Last Dance.
01:12I recently did a TikTok with Sean Patrick Thomas where we revisited some of the moves from the film.
01:18But it's also just like really fun to look at it because it has that very clear late 90s, early 2000s vibe,
01:26which is kind of in now again.
01:27So if you're looking for some inspo, just rewatch Save the Last Dance.
01:32This is a character named Alicia Masters and she's in the film Fantastic Four.
01:37And I got really, really lucky because Alicia Masters traditionally in the comic throughout history is blind.
01:43And I had just actually finished shooting Ray, watching Jamie Foxx's Oscar winning performance playing a blind person.
01:51So I had a little bit of a cheat sheet.
01:53Alicia was an artist. So with her wardrobe, we tried to keep it really kind of like funky and artsy.
02:00And we used a lot of nice, rich textures and knits, stuff that would be tactile for her,
02:06stuff she might be interested in from her other sensory points of view.
02:11So this is Brumhilde von Schaft, my character in Django.
02:15These costumes were all designed by the incredibly talented, Oscar nominated Sharon Davis.
02:21We had such an amazing time putting together the costumes for this film because we had to kind of straddle the world of Brumhilde von Schaft
02:30in her slave life when she was working out in the fields and on the run.
02:35And Brumhilde von Schaft when she worked in the house and had to look like more of a lady.
02:40The period clothing, the fabrics were really rich, the bodices were so tailored, lots of corseting.
02:48For me, costume is one of the ways that you really step into a character.
02:52You really understand so much about who a character is by how they dress.
02:56And that was definitely true in Django.
02:59It was really, really helpful to have these costumes and really an unforgettable experience.
03:05This is from a film called Confirmation, where I had the honor of portraying Anita Hill, one of our most important feminist icons.
03:12Without Anita Hill, we really wouldn't have the language or the understanding for sexual harassment that we have today.
03:18It was really phenomenal to get to watch Anita in real life, in real time.
03:25I would say like 80 to 90% of the costumes in the film were clothes that we saw her in in real life.
03:32To recreate a lot of that fashion was really inspiring.
03:37And I remember when I put that blue dress on, the iconic blue dress that she testified to the Senate in.
03:45It felt very profound to really step into her shoes literally and wear her clothes and say her words.
03:56It really was like stepping into history and the clothes helped me do that.
04:00This is Olivia Pope and this is from the finale.
04:05In the very first episode of the show, she had on a white trench when she said those first words for the first time, it's handled.
04:13And that image became so iconic.
04:16We really wanted to make sure that in the finale, we brought back kind of a new and upgraded, newer white trench
04:25to kind of make sure that we were closing the circle on who she had been throughout the history of the show.
04:32That image in particular is really special because for most of our seven seasons, we shot the entire series in Los Angeles.
04:39But for the final two episodes, we went to Washington, D.C.
04:42So it's really amazing to have these images of Olivia Pope in the white trench in front of the actual real White House.
04:49It's pretty cool. White coat, White House, all that stuff.
04:52The three things that I really loved most about Olivia Pope's wardrobe were her shoes, her bags, and her coats.
04:59And I really like that so many women identified with those accessories and those layers
05:03because it also meant that you could kind of enter into her fashion.
05:07Even if you couldn't afford a $7,000 Dior suit, you could maybe get the shoes or the bag.
05:13There were entry points to her style that I thought were really important.
05:16The coats really were born out of Lin Paolo's genius dedication to making sure that we were conveying region.
05:25Olivia Pope was a character who lived in the Northeast.
05:27There are seasons in the Northeast.
05:29So we really used layering with sweaters and jackets and coats as a way to really remind the viewer
05:36that we were on the East Coast, that we were in Washington, D.C.
05:39In the seven seasons of the show, I do not have a favorite look.
05:43I love them all. They're like my children.
05:45I have a few of those Prada bags in my personal collection.
05:48We had them in almost every single color.
05:51And the purses and the coats also really came in handy.
05:55In two seasons in particular where I was with child, pregnant, and Olivia Pope was not.
06:01So in those seasons, the bags and the coats also served the extra purpose of hiding Kerry Washington's pregnancy
06:07so that Olivia Pope could still be Olivia Pope.
06:10So this is from Little Fires Everywhere.
06:13This is also Lin Paolo, which is so exciting.
06:16And one of the things I love about this image is that you can really see how beautifully Lin used fashion
06:21to tell the story of how different our characters were.
06:24My character Mia and Reese's character Elena.
06:28And you could really tell so much about these women, who they were, how they lived their lives,
06:34how they thought of themselves, how much money they had by how they dressed.
06:38And that was really thanks to Lin.
06:40This is from the film The Prom.
06:43This is me and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose.
06:45I really loved my clothes in this film because I was playing kind of the bad guy,
06:50kind of the nemesis, the evil one in the movie, which was really fun.
06:54And the clothes were kind of Stepford wifey, which was also really fun.
07:01I got to work with Lou, who's the longtime costume designer for Ryan Murphy.
07:05She's worked with him for decades.
07:07And she is so extremely talented.
07:11She really, really got kind of who I wanted to be in this role
07:16and how I wanted to convey a certain level of kind of conservative classism and judgmental nature.
07:24And I think we were able to pull it off.
07:26And I was really happy to be able to be well-dressed and super mean to Meryl Streep.
07:32This is the beautiful work of costume designer Renee Ehrlich-Kauffis.
07:38She's our costume designer for School for Good and Evil.
07:40We had such a blast creating this look.
07:44There was a lot of talk about what should the dean for the School for Good look like.
07:48And we kind of went through different images of fairy godmothers and all different periods.
07:53The film kind of has an amorphous sense of period, but not one particular period.
08:00So we went with lots of corsets.
08:02There's a little Beyonce inspiration in here.
08:05I like that the fans have noticed that.
08:07I wanted her to feel surreal, otherworldly.
08:12At the School for Good, there's a real emphasis on looking good, not just being good.
08:17So we played a lot with pink tones, gold tones,
08:21really making sure that the costume's all shown with a lot of sparkle and light
08:26and the appearance of silk and luxe.
08:29And all of that was really fun to juxtapose with Charlize's look as the dean of the School for Evil
08:35because her look is much darker, more structured, masculine, not so frilly and frou-frou.
08:44Thank you so much for watching and for going through some of my most favorite costumes ever.
08:50I'm so excited for you to see the School for Good and Evil.
08:53Let me know below what your favorite looks were or if I missed any. Thanks!
09:04.