When it came to planning her recent wedding, actress Kerry Washington took a page out of her Scandal character Olivia Pope’s book. As the rich, famous and powerful get into trouble on the must-see new TV One drama, PR guru Olivia is there to protect her clients from hitting the headlines – even if that means mopping up some blood stains along the way.
And while there was nothing controversial to hide about her own nuptials, Kerry proved her PR skills are almost as good as Olivia’s, and kept her year-long relationship with NFL star Nnamdi Asomugha, and their June wedding, entirely secret.
“She ultimately learned something from Olivia,” co-star Dan Bucatinsky told E! News.
“I think she just wanted a little privacy. I did know she was dating, I didn’t know they were going to get married.”
Kerry shone most recently in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, but her role in Scandal has earned her the biggest following. In the US, the show is in its third season, and has millions of viewers tuning in each week to find out more about her secret relationship with the president.
Based in part on the life of lawyer Judy Smith (who was press secretary to President George Bush Sr before starting her own crisis management firm in Washington DC, where she represented Monica Lewinsky), Kerry says she loves playing a morally ambiguous role.
“I think it’s great that the writers can make the characters live in the grey area. There are no good guys and bad guys. Everyone is flawed and human,” she says, at the show’s LA launch.
“In the pilot episode, you have Guillermo Diaz’s character Huck telling Quinn [Katie Lowes] there is no crying in this office. And in that very same episode, Olivia is crying in the coat closet. I thought to myself, ‘Nothing is as it seems on Scandal.’”