Can’t miss out on that #TGIT! Kerry Washington tweeted about her smash ABC series Scandal — while in labor with her daughter Isabelle last April.
Washington, 38, told Net-A-Porter’s The Edit in its new issue that she devised a grand scheme during her pregnancy. “Every Thursday within three weeks of my due date, I loaded up pre-tweets based on the episodes and what I would want to say,” she dished. “I tweeted in the very early stages of my labor.”
The actress, who plays Olivia Pope on Shonda Rhimes‘ series and looks beautiful in the fashion mag’s cover story, explained why. “I figured that if I went completely silent on social media, then people would know I was in the hospital!” she confessed.
While her premeditated move was very much like her on-screen persona, Washington said there are, thankfully, differences. “A lot of therapy!” she told the mag. “Not to say that I have it all together, but I think I have a little bit more awareness about my behavior patterns and I do the work it takes to get out of them.”
“[Rhimes] never wrote Olivia Pope to be a role model,” Washington noted. “She wrote her to be a human being, and part of what people identify with so much is that she is conflicted. In some ways, she’s so aspirational — you want to walk like her, dress like her, command attention like her and control a situation like her. In other ways, she’s a warning of what not to be.”
Like Pope, Washington has an interest to take part in the political narrative. “I have a sense of responsibility that was ingrained in me as a kid, but I’m not perfect; I haven’t voted in every election,” she shared. “But I’m trying to be better about it because so many people put their lives on the line for me to have this right.”
In fact, her passion for politics could have been an alternate career option. “I would be involved in politics, but I would probably be teaching,” the George Washington University alum shared.
“It’s what my mother did, so it’s in my blood. My mother is so badass. I watched her get her doctorate when I was a little girl: she got that around the same time that I graduated from kindergarten so we both had caps and gowns. I grew up with a belief in the importance of a woman’s mind and that has been a real gift for me.”