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Olivia Pope, Kerry Washington’s high-powered, high-energy superlawyer on Scandal, can’t afford to be tired, and this year neither could Washington. After an emotionally taxing shoot for the upcoming Django Unchained—in the role of Broomhilda, Jamie Foxx’s damsel in distress—the actress had only one weekend to make the transition back from playing a captured slave in the antebellum South to playing Pope, one of the most powerful women in contemporary America. (As well as the only black female lead on network television.)
“It was the hardest leap I’ve ever had to make,” says Washington. “Because I wasn’t going from myself to Olivia Pope, who is already vastly more intelligent than I am and vastly more powerful and sophisticated and cool. And I wasn’t going from myself to Broomhilda. It was going from Broomhilda to Olivia and my head was spinning for that first week on Scandal and a little bit longer.”
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