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On her family’s humble beginnings:

“My mother literally cried when I told her I wanted to be an actor [laughs]. She kept finding these interesting ways to convince me that I would be good at other things. Like she would say, ‘Closing arguments are a lot like monologues.’ Or she would say, ‘psychiatrists also make a living by studying how other people think and feel.’ So she kept pitching me these other careers that were similar to acting. Both my parents both came from working class families. I mean, my mother’s parents were immigrants who came to NY from Ellis Island. My dad’s father, he worked as a janitor for the UN. My parents come from very humble beginnings and they really created success for themselves through education and hard work, and so they wanted me to go further. And their nightmare would be that I would become a starving artist living on the street. They really didn’t want me to starve [laughs].

On black female role models and brown Barbie dolls:

“I’m on the cover of ESSENCE for the month of November, and that means a lot to me because I grew up in a household where my mother was a subscriber to ESSENCE. And so I grew up feeling like black women should and are on the cover of fashion magazines. And my mother did not grow up in that world, which is part of the reason why her subscription meant so much to her. I remember Vanessa Williams winning Miss America and I remember the impact that had in my household. My mother was very conscious of, for example, making sure I had dolls that were brown, brown Cabbage patch kids so they looked like me, brown Barbie dolls, so they looked like me. I was allowed to have white ones, too but [laughs].”

On why growing up in New York City delayed her foray into fashion:

“I think that really the fashion and beauty stuff is fun for me because I came to it really late in life. I really was a bookworm, nerd, theater kid. I think I had a lot of fear around it to be honest because growing up in New York City if you look too cute, it means something when you walk down the street. It calls a certain kind of attention to you that can be devastatingly terrifying. So I think for a lot of my life I tried to avoid that kind of attention, and just thought no, I’m just going to be smart and funny, and not worry about being pretty. And so when I came to this stuff, I came to it like a student. And I decided, you know what, I think I’m going to start to learn how to do this red carpet thing, because it’s part of my marketing department as an actor, for me to be a smart businesswoman, I should take advantage of this opportunity in this section of my life and my work. And there are eyes on me and I don’t want to take that for granted. I want to show up in this part of my life in a way that feels responsible. So I studied like the child of a professor that I am, I studied. I was going to learn the difference between Louis Vuitton and Lanvin, and I did. And so it excites me. You know, now when I watch the shows, for me, it’s like going to an opera or going to the museum. It’s a great artist, previewing their new work and I enjoy it, and I celebrate it.”

On protecting her privacy:

“I just have to be more conscious about my boundaries. I just have to be more careful and more conscious about the choices that I make, the things that I say, the places I go, the things I do in order to maintain my own identity and personal life. I really put it in the work. I try to be really naked emotionally in my work. Because if I do that, I don’t have guilt in keeping my life for me, because I’m giving all of it.”

10 Style Tips From Kerry Washington
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For 2024’s iteration of MadameNoire and HelloBeautiful’s annual series Women to Know, we knew we wanted to celebrate the people who help make the joys of film and television possible. To create art is to create magic. This year, we spotlight Hollywood Executive’s changing the face of cinema.