{"id":268548,"date":"2026-10-13T22:00:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/kerry-washington-credits-olivia-pope-for-making-her-a-leader-in-life\/"},"modified":"2026-10-13T22:00:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-13T22:00:13","slug":"kerry-washington-credits-olivia-pope-for-making-her-a-leader-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/10\/13\/kerry-washington-credits-olivia-pope-for-making-her-a-leader-in-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Kerry Washington credits Olivia Pope for making her a ‘leader in life’"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Kerry Washington<\/a> has credited her Scandal character Olivia Pope for helping her learn how to be a \u201cleader in my life\u201d. <\/p>\n

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Kerry Washington says Olivia Pope helped turn her into a ‘leader’<\/p>\n

The 49-year-old actress starred as the White House communications director turned consulting firm fixer in Shonda Rhimes<\/a>\u2019 Scandal from 2012 to 2018. <\/p>\n

Despite taking on numerous projects since Scandal came to an end, Kerry is still arguably most famous for her portrayal of Olivia which, she said, also had a massive impact on her own life. <\/p>\n

She told Defined magazine: \u201cWhen I first started playing Olivia Pope I understood what power looked like and how it moved through the world, but I hadn\u2019t really stepped into my own power. <\/p>\n

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\u201cShe taught me how to be a leader in my life, in my home, in my career, in activism, she taught me how to have my name on that front door.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nKerry does her best to take life lessons from all the characters she plays on screen, as she mused: \u201cIf I\u2019m lucky, I\u2019m taking on a character at a crossroads when she\u2019s learning something enormous, and I weave her lessons into my soul. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cThen I pick up another character who teaches me incredible life lessons about who I want to be or who I don\u2019t want to be, and again I get to weave in all of her learning, express something that I need to express through her, then put her down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\nElsewhere in the interview, Kerry reflected on how her concept of perfection has changed as she\u2019s aged. <\/p>\n

\nShe explained: \u201cWhen I was younger I let \u2018perfect\u2019 be defined by other people\u2019s ideas of me rather than of my own desires and sense of self. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cI reached for a cultural idea of perfection that had a lot to do with thinness, numbers on a scale, a label size and fitting into an outfit on a runway. <\/p>\n

\n\u201cI\u2019ve really shifted away from that, to perfect being about health and wellness and strength and flexibility. I care very much about appearance, but more about posture and strength and less about sample size and numbers on a scale.”<\/p>\n

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13 October 2026 Kerry Washington has credited her Scandal character Olivia Pope for helping her learn how to be a \u201cleader in my life\u201d. Kerry Washington says Olivia Pope helped turn her into a ‘leader’ The 49-year-old actress starred as the White House communications director turned consulting firm fixer in Shonda Rhimes\u2019 Scandal from 2012 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":268549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1555,17122,4004],"class_list":{"0":"post-268548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-kerry-washington","9":"tag-olivia-pope","10":"tag-shonda-rhimes"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}