‘Stop playing white girl’s best friend’: Kerry Washington attacks racism in Hollywood

Beginning her acting career in the early 2000s, Kerry Washington has largely established herself in the Hollywood landscape. He really got into orbit with the success of the solid series Scandal, which he has been the main host of since 2012. She portrays Olivia Pope, a public relations expert known especially for crisis management.

Publication of his memoirs in the United States, entitled Thicker than waterThe actor speaks without a filter about the racism he faced in Hollywood, reviewing the clichéd roles he played in the past. He cites as an example the movie In the Ropes, where he starred with Meg Ryan.

“I played Meg Ryan’s co-worker and confidant in this movie – it became a new niche for me, a white girl’s best friend!” As he writes, On the Ropes was the third film in a row in which he starred as a white woman’s best friend.

“When Harry Met Sally is one of my three favorite movies of all time, so after playing Meg Ryan’s best friend, playing the same role against someone else would be counterproductive.”

His career continued with supporting roles that were much more important than supporting roles, as in Ray, or even more so in The Last King of Scotland, where Forest Whitaker played the terrible and bloodthirsty dictator of Uganda, Idi Amin Dada.

And the actor continued: “I didn’t want to be the star of the movie, no, I just wanted my characters to have their own story. I didn’t want to be an accessory in the white woman’s trajectory!”