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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
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0:00
Hi, I'm Keri Washington, and today we're going Behind the Looks
0:15
This is Save the Last Dance. I worked with an amazing costume designer named Sandra Hernandez
0:22
She really was into the fact that Chenille, my character, wanted to be a fashion designer
0:27
So we really played with using clothes that Chanel had purchased and kind of repurposed
0:34
So there was a lot of kind of mismatched patterns. And, you know, we mixed different clothing items and sewed them together
0:42
Like very funky, very cool, very unique, courageous and bold. She was very, very, very into fashion, Chanel
0:50
And that was very fun for me because at the time I was an actor living in New York with very, very little money
0:57
I was working at a restaurant, so being able to step into Chanel's fashion was like a dream come true and so fun and much more adventurous than how I dressed in my everyday
1:09
I do remember a lot of the dances from Save the Last Dance. I recently did a TikTok with Sean Patrick Thomas where we revisited some of the moves from the film
1:18
But it's also just, like, really fun to look at it because it has that very clear late 90s, early 2000s vibe, which is kind of in now again
1:27
So if you're looking for some inspo, just rewatch Save the Last Dance
1:32
This is a character named Alicia Masters, and she's in the film Fantastic Four
1:37
And I got really, really lucky because Alicia Masters, traditionally in the comic throughout history, is blind
1:43
And I had just actually finished shooting Ray, watching Jamie Foxx's Oscar-winning performance playing a blind person
1:51
So I had a little bit of a cheat sheet. Alicia was an artist. So with her wardrobe, we tried to keep it really kind of like funky and artsy
2:00
And we used a lot of nice rich textures and knits, stuff that would be tactile for her
2:06
Stuff she might be interested in from her other sensory points of view
2:10
So this is Broomhilde von Schaft my character in Django These costumes were all designed by the incredibly talented Oscar Sharon Davis We had such an amazing time putting together the costumes for this film because we had to kind of straddle the worlds of Broomhilde von Schaft in her slave life when she was working out in the fields and on the run
2:35
and Broomhilde von Schaft when she worked in the house and had to look like more of a lady
2:39
The period clothing, the fabrics were really rich, the bodices were so tailored, lots of corseting
2:47
For me, costume is one of the ways that you really step into a character
2:52
You really understand so much about who a character is by how they dress, and that was definitely true in Django
2:59
It was really, really helpful to have these costumes and really an unforgettable experience
3:05
This is from a film called Confirmation, where I had the honor of portraying Anita Hill, one of our most important feminist icons
3:12
Without Anita Hill, we really wouldn't have the language or the understanding for sexual harassment that we have today
3:17
It was really phenomenal to get to watch Anita in real life, in real time
3:25
I would say like 80 to 90% of the costumes in the film were clothes that we saw her in in real life
3:32
To recreate a lot of that fashion was really inspiring. And I remember when I put that blue dress on, the iconic blue dress that she testified to the Senate in
3:45
It felt very profound to really step into her shoes literally and wear her clothes and say her words
3:56
It really was like stepping into history. And the clothes helped me do that
4:00
This is Olivia Pope. And this is from the finale. In 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
4:13
And that image became so iconic. We really wanted to make sure that in the finale, we brought back kind of a new and upgraded, newer white trench to kind of make sure that we were closing the circle on who she had been throughout the history of the show
4:32
That image in particular is really special because for most of our seven seasons we shot the entire series in Los Angeles But for the final two episodes we went to Washington D So it really amazing to have these images of Olivia Pope in the white trench in front
4:46
of the actual real White House. It's pretty cool. White coat, White House, all that stuff
4:52
The three things that I really love most about Olivia Pope's wardrobe were her shoes, her
4:57
bags, and her coats. And I really like that so many women identified with those accessories and those layers because
5:03
because it also meant that you could kind of enter into her fashion. Even if you couldn't afford a $7,000 Dior suit
5:10
you could maybe get the shoes or the bag. There were entry points to her style that I thought were really important
5:16
The coats really were born out of Lynn Paolo's genius dedication to making sure that we were conveying region
5:24
Olivia Pope was a character who lived in the Northeast. There are seasons in the Northeast
5:28
So we really used layering with sweaters and jackets and coats as a way to really remind the viewer that we were on the East Coast, that we were in Washington, D.C
5:39
In the seven seasons of the show, I do not have a favorite look. I love them all. They're like my children
5:45
I have a few of those Prada bags in my personal collection. We had them in almost every single color
5:51
And the purses and the coats also really came in handy in two seasons in particular where I was with child, pregnant, and Olivia Pope was not
6:01
So in those seasons, the bags and the coats also served the extra purpose of hiding Kerry Washington's pregnancy so that Olivia Pope could still be Olivia Pope
6:10
So this is from Little Fires Everywhere. This is also Lynn Paolo, which is so exciting
6:15
And one of the things I love about this image is that you can really see how beautifully Lynn used fashion to tell the story of how different our characters were
6:25
My character Mia and Reese's character Elena. And you could really tell so much about these women, who they were, how they lived their lives, how they thought of themselves, how much money they had by how they dressed
6:38
And that was really thanks to Lynn. This is from the film The Prom
6:42
This is me and Oscar winner Ariana DeBose. I really loved my clothes in this film because I was playing
6:49
kind of the bad guy, kind of the nemesis, the evil one in the movie which was really fun And the clothes were kind of Stepford wifey which was also really fun I got to work with Lou who the longtime costume designer for Ryan Murphy
7:05
She's worked with him for decades and she is so extremely talented
7:11
She really, really got where, kind of who I wanted to be in this role
7:16
and how I wanted to convey a certain level of kind of conservative classism
7:21
and judgmental nature. And I think we were able to pull it off
7:26
And I was really happy to be able to be well-dressed and super mean to Meryl Streep
7:33
This is the beautiful work of costume designer Renee Ehrlich-Kalpas. She's our costume designer for School for Good and Evil
7:40
We had such a blast creating this look. There was a lot of talk about what should the dean
7:46
for the School for Good look like. And we kind of went through different images
7:50
of fairy godmothers and all different periods. The film kind of has an amorphous sense of period
7:58
but not one particular period. So we went with lots of corsets
8:02
There's a little Beyonce inspiration in here. I like that the fans have noticed that
8:07
I wanted her to feel surreal, otherworldly. At the School for Good, there's a real emphasis
8:14
on looking good, not just being good. So we played a lot with pink tones, gold tones, really making sure that the costumes all shone with a lot of sparkle and light and the appearance of silk and luxe
8:29
And all of that was really fun to juxtapose with Charlize's look as the dean of the school for evil because her look is much, you know, kind of darker, more structured, masculine, not so frilly and frou-frou
8:44
Thank you so much for watching and for going through some of my most favorite costumes ever
8:49
I'm so excited for you to see The School for Good and Evil. Let me know below what your favorite looks were or if I missed any
8:56
Thanks
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