Anna❤️TnK

TONY GOLDWYN: Yeah, I think so. I just got a call that she was interested in me doing this. I love Shonda and have so much respect for her, and really love the creative process of working for her, as a director. Then, when I heard Kerry Washington was involved – and I’ve just been so impressed with her work, in everything she’s done, and know her socially and admire her a lot – the combination of Shonda and Kerry was overwhelming.

GOLDWYN: Kerry and I knew each other a bit before and we were excited to work together, and we did talk a bit, but not too much. Because Fitz and Olivia are so unable to communicate with each other, we didn’t need to talk too much. As I recall, we would have conversations where we straightened out what we needed to know to get on the same page about things, and then we’d stop and just see what happened in the scenes. I talked much more with Jeff Perry about Cyrus. Jeff and I spent a lot of time talking. The thing about this show that makes it really fun, and one of the things that’s unique about it, is that there’s always so much going on underneath what people are saying, so it’s really hard to understand what the hell is happening, and we, obviously, have to understand it ‘cause that’s the only way the audiences has a prayer. So, Jeff and I would really sort things out, and sometimes Kerry and I would have brief conversations about it. There was something about Fitz and Olivia’s inability to communicate that we wanted to hold onto. Kerry and I have similar ways of working. We seem to see it in the same way. Our instincts are similar, so we didn’t have to have long conversations about it. That’s why we work well together. That shorthand develops because you have similar instincts as actors, and we were pretty much on the same page about that history.

Tony Goldwyn: Well, a couple of things. Number one was Shonda Rhimes. I’d worked with Shonda as a director on “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Private Practice,” and have so much admiration for her and know what great rich characters she writes, so that was number one. The second part was Kerry Washington, who is one of my favorite actresses. I think that she’s one of our best young film actresses, and every time I see Kerry in a movie, I am just knocked out by it, so that excited me a lot.

TG: It’s like it’s magical. As I mentioned, I have so much respect for Kerry as an actress — we knew each other socially and we’re both really involved politically, so we have always kind of hit it off personally. I just have tremendous respect for her on many different fronts, and she’s a stunningly beautiful woman. So, I don’t know, chemistry is such a funny thing. There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s either there or it’s not. Our acting styles seem to mesh, you know, our way of working, and I think we have a mutual respect for each other. Then there’s physical chemistry, which is something, like I said, you can’t manufacture. We find that we work really well together, and it’s easy to fall in love with her.

TG: She throws herself so wholeheartedly into everything she does. We almost never talk about what we’re doing—we communicate on a different level. That’s kind of magical.

But when “Scandal” creator Shonda Rhimes presented him with the chance to be a president — with a treacherous wife and a model-gorgeous girlfriend — he changed his mind.

Tony: “I just thought this was such a great, fun piece of material and a potentially fantastic role that I just wanted to give it a shot,” he says.

“And when I heard that Kerry Washington was going to be playing Olivia Pope, I barely had to read the script.

“I’m just such a huge fan of Kerry’s. I have been for years.”

Given their steamy onscreen chemistry, Goldwyn’s regard for Washington appears to be mutual.