"Everybody dies, but not everybody lives."

Damn, Kerry!! 

Kerry appears at 38:10. They’re adorable. 

It turns out that Kerry Washington is a good deal less capricious than any of the women she’s become famous for playing. But that’s exactly how she ended up playing them. “I put a lot of thought into figuring out how to do this in a way that was sane,” Washington says of a life spent performing. “It was that combination of dreaming that anything is possible and then creating these structures wherein I could pursue those dreams with some sanity.”

Though it hardly makes for the sensational first scene of a pilot or play, Washington has maneuvered the business reason-first, both feet tethered firmly to reality, since Day 1. She has always, however, allowed herself to dream. The dichotomy explains why an acting career occurred to her at all, and why she was nearing adulthood when it did. Call it pragmatic dreaming, which, in practice, is exactly how Washington describes it herself.  

“You have to pray to catch the bus—but then run as fast as you can [when it arrives],” she says. “If you don’t run, that could have been your bus. But you can’t just sit around and daydream and expect things to unfold. You have to also have the pedal meet the metal. You have to take action. For me, there was always this idea of ‘Stay in faith, dream big, take action.’ Then, if I don’t get the bus, it wasn’t meant to be my bus.”

Washington always loved to tell stories, but growing up, the idea of acting professionally only existed on a far-off plane. “To me, actors were famous people, people on the covers of magazines,” she explains. “I didn’t see myself as that kind of person, ironically.” Ironically because, well, Washington is now quite famous and she is also, presently, speaking (via Zoom) for the purpose of being on this very magazine cover.

But even now, with four Emmy nominations to her name, her own production company, and, yes, having graced more than a few glossy magazine covers, Washington is clear that this type of exposure and adulation was never the pursuit. Actually, the big “aha moment” that made her say yes to a career in the arts—which many actors cite as a dazzling film performance seen as a child or an Oscars acceptance speech watched in the family living room—was a bit more functional.

“I was taking a class called Acting as a Business,” she recalls. “It was part of a conservatory program that I did at Michael Howard Studios [in New York]. In that course, our teacher started talking about unions. I hadn’t really conceptualized the idea that there were unions for actors. That, to me, meant there were lots of working actors who were making a living. I realized, ‘Oh, I could aim to do that.’ ”And there’s the rub: While so many aspirants are focused on the gleaming car, Washington has always been as concerned with the machinery beneath the hood. It explains why, even at George Washington University, where she matriculated, she didn’t major in acting, opting instead for anthropology and sociology. Her decision-making process, naturally, was multitiered and multipurpose.

“I didn’t study acting in college for two reasons,” she says. The first reason was for the realist in her: “I knew there were things like substitute teaching for New York City public schools that are harder to do with an arts degree. I didn’t know when I went into college that I wanted to be an actor, so I thought I might go to graduate school for anthropology, or that I might go to law school, or that I might get a master’s in education. I wanted to have options with my degree.”

The second reason, though, was for the dreamer who held out hope that the acting thing might pan out, even when the more rational parts of her id thought otherwise. “I also had a feeling that studying liberal arts, in particular social science, could maybe make me a better artist, right?” she says. “If my job as an actor is to embody human reality and human beings in their journey through time, maybe knowing more about history and psychology and sociology could actually help me understand my role as an artist in embodying people.”

Though she didn’t intend to be an actor while there, she performed in many plays at college, and when it came time to graduate, Washington’s conflicting natures struck a deal: She’d give it a year, and if in that time she could land some work and make some inroads, she’d keep at it. But if the year yielded little sign she was on the right path, she’d circle back to law school or something similar. As always, there was a plan beneath the plan (and, likely, another plan beneath that one, too).

“Saying, ‘I’m going to give myself a year to see if anything happens and if it doesn’t, I’ll go in a different direction,’ that was also part of how I motivated myself,” she says. “I knew a lot of people who were dreaming big but weren’t taking action. I think giving myself a year made me feel like I’d better be taking action in that year, because if this is all the time I have, I don’t want to waste it being in fear.”

Consciously choosing not to succumb to fear is another way in which Washington subverted the common pitfalls of early-career actors. While she admits to not having done so perfectly, she tried from the start to abide by the expression “Wearing life like a loose T-shirt,” which means exactly what it evokes: relaxing, not taking oneself too seriously. It mostly stuck, and was especially seminal in how she learned to audition.

“It meant that I could show up for auditions [thinking] it was just an opportunity to get to do what I love to do, which is act, for 15 minutes. Maybe you wanted me in your play or maybe you didn’t,” she says. “I could walk into a room without this feeling that I could do something to control whether I was going to get the role. It allowed me more healthy detachment and flexibility around auditioning, in a way. I’ve definitely had moments where I’ve had to work hard to cultivate that level of: walk in the room to be of service, walk in the room to have fun, walk in the room to participate in a joyful, artful act, as opposed to walk in the room to try to get people to like me.”

That thinking also helped Washington approach her work without a “please pick me” desperation, which can lead actors at any stage of their career to take on projects they don’t believe in or, worse, actively resent. After all, fear does not dissipate when success has been attained, it just mutates.

Washington planned for that, too. After graduating but before pounding the pavement, she spent several months in India. “Part of why I did that was because I really wanted to go somewhere and study where theater and movement arts were grounded in a rich spiritual tradition, because I knew I would get back to the States and would be desperate to book a fast-food commercial to pay my rent,” she says. “I knew that was going to be the dynamic. I wanted to give myself some time really discovering and allowing myself to experience the sacred nature of theater in ancient traditions so that I could hold a little bit of that with me as I was in these huge cattle calls for some insurance company commercial.

“As a woman, and particularly as a woman of color, there would come along roles that I felt were demeaning or culturally insensitive or perpetuating a stereotype,” she continues. “It was important to me to say, ‘No, I’ll teach more yoga, I’ll do more shifts at the restaurant,’ whatever the hustle was, because I don’t want to be part of telling stories that I don’t think are good for people.”

She acknowledges, of course, that when it comes to selecting projects, “Sometimes you make the choice, sometimes the choice gets made for you.” But Washington has always tried to apply that thinking—having a net positive outcome from her work—when weighing a role. It was true for early standout parts like those in “Save the Last Dance” and then “Ray,” true for the seven seasons she spent as a crisis manager on Shonda Rhimes’ genre-defining “Scandal,” and true for the 2016 HBO feature “Confirmation” and the 2019 Broadway-turned-Netflix production “American Son,” both of which, through their exploration of sexual harassment and police brutality, have unfortunately become even more prescient today.

Though she has more growing yet to do herself, part of the joy of doing “Little Fires” was the many scenes she shared with its young stars, particularly her onscreen daughter, played by Lexi Underwood. That, in itself, has been the lesson that keeps on teaching the actor.

“I learned really early on in my career that having this other human being to focus on wholeheartedly in the scene makes me better, because acting is doing,” she says. “If you’re just in a whirlwind of self-consciousness, that rarely lends itself to solid craft. I’ve found that if I come to the scene with the goal of making sure that the actor across from me is in truth, then I’ll also be reaching for truth, because I’ll want to do whatever it takes to get them to have the most organic, authentic reactions. [It’s] that willingness to be more focused on your scene partner.”

Nnamdi Asomugha, a former All-Pro NFL star turned dramatic actor, makes his Broadway debut as Private First Class Melvin Peterson in Charles Fuller's Pulitzer-prize winning drama, A SOLDIER'S PLAY. Set in a Louisiana Army base in 1944, the gripping murder mystery explores the complicated themes of sacrifice, service, and identity in America. Today, Asomugha speaks with BroadwayWorld and shares his tenacious journey from the football field to the Broadway stage.

Congratulations on the success of the show! I understand that you were intrigued by acting from a very young age.

Yes, intrigued might be the word. I always had a great respect for the business of acting and filmmaking and theater, but I never imagined that that would be a career choice for me. That was not until about halfway through my NFL career that I even thought that that could be possible. I didn't do the high school plays growing up. Well actually, I did do one play in the fifth grade, we did A Midsummer Night's Dream and I played King Oberon. But that was the extent of my theatre work. But like I said, I was intrigued and I had a great respect for it. The first film that I ever saw as a kid was Who Framed Roger Rabbit, which was part cartoon, part real life. So it really did not seem real to me. But then the second film I saw in the theater, my aunt snuck us in to see Boyz n the Hood, which was a very different film from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Growing up in L.A. it felt very close to home. I understood what was going on in the film and I remember when I left the theater, the first thing I asked my aunt was, 'Are you sure this wasn't real? Are you sure this is a movie?' Because to me, movies were make-believe, but this one was just so real. And to hear that it was a movie, I remember at that age being very intrigued and being wowed that actors could make believe something and make it feel so real and seem so accurate.

Your breakthrough performance came in the 2017 film Crown Heights, and the following year you made your stage debut in Vineyard Theater's GOOD GRIEF. What were some of the challenges you faced in making that transition from film to live theater?So many transitions, right? From football to the entertainment world and then the transition from film to theater. There's just so many things to adjust to. Well with film, the camera can really speak to your thoughts. As long as you're dialed in and as honest as possible, the camera is going to take over. It will zoom in when it's a vulnerable moment, it can really pick up on anything. And then of course you also have the editing room where you can put together performances, you're kind of putting together a highlight reel from all of your attempts at it. But on the stage, you're pretty much out there by yourself, there is no camera. So rather than the camera zooming in on those moments, you have to figure out how to fill up the stage and how to fill up the space. You're breathing the same air as the audience, so if you accidentally drop something on the floor, you can't leave it there, you have to pick it up and keep going. I've learned that there are no mistakes on the stage. But I love it. There's just something about it. You're always reaching for that perfect performance and you're just never going to get it. And I love that about theater. You can get to your next show and you suddenly hear a line differently, and you think, 'Oh, that's what that meant. That's how he felt in that moment.' But you didn't realize it until that very moment in that particular show. So you're always discovering - and there's something very exciting about that.

A SOLDIER'S PLAY was written in the early 1980's and takes place in 1944, yet it still feels so relevant today. Why do you think it is striking such a chord with modern audiences?

Well I think that while it is a universal story, the specifics of it are very American, and I think audiences understand that. I think the interracial and the intraracial dynamics in the play are very striking. I think the ideas of race, and power, and fear and the quest for freedom are also very palpable and powerful in this story. And of course, just the way Kenny [Leon] has been able to direct it, he really makes sure to bridge the gap between 1944 and 2020 as much as possible. You know it's there in the words, but the way you direct it can also make it feel very relevant. Kenny found a way to bring in relevant music at the end of the play, and he also incorporated the songs that are heard throughout the play.

Yes, those call-and-response songs and spirituals were very powerful. So they were not part of the original production?

That's correct, they were not in the original production at all. What Kenny wanted to do was really show that it wasn't just about the military. A lot of it was, particularly for African Americans in World War II, a very different level of work. So there are Negro spirituals and different things that Kenny wanted to bring in, especially with the way this particular Sergeant runs the show. And it makes the audience start to wonder, 'Are they getting ready for battle or are they on a plantation? What exactly is going on?' So he wanted to make that connection and underscore the way that Sergeant Waters acts around black people versus the way he acts around white people, and how that contrast can become very tricky amongst the men in the barracks.

You portray Private First Class Melvin Peterson, and it's interesting to note that you actually share something in common with him as far as where you grew up.

Yes, I was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, but I didn't grow up there. I moved to Los Angeles when I was about three. And one of the first things that Private Peterson says in the play when he's being questioned is that he is from Hollywood, California but by way of Alabama. So that is actually very similar. If you ask me where I'm from I would answer, Los Angeles, California by way of Louisiana. So we are both by way of the South, but we spent enough time in California to feel that that's where we connect to the most. So that is a direct connection that I have with him. And another thing we have common is that he is new to the barracks, he's the guy who just got in. The other guys have been there for a while, they know how things run, they know how the Sergeant is, they know how everything operates. And Peterson is trying to essentially figure it all out and learn who's on his side, and who isn't, what he's supposed to do in certain situations. And that's very much how I feel in the theater world. You know, I'm the new guy compared to everybody else. These guys have been in thirty or forty plays in their lives, and this being my second, I'm still trying to find my footing and find out how things operate. So I can really connect to him with that. So there really are a lot of similarities that I can pull from with this character.

In addition to working with Tony-winning director Kenny Leon, you also share the stage with such theater veterans as David Alan Grier and Blair Underwood. What has that experience been like and what have you learned from them?

Oh man, I'm attracted to good coaching and these guys have all been good coaches for me. I'm able to flourish with these guys. You know if I'm on stage and I do something that they feel is honest, but they know in a theater, the way that I do it might not be felt, they do not hesitate to tell me, and I welcome that. They'll say,' Oh you know that was great, but you turned over your right shoulder, so in the theater, turn over your left shoulder and you'll connect more with the audience.' It seems like a simple thing, but these are the things that you learn along the way. Obviously you learn that when you''re training in school, but in many ways I'm playing catch up to a lot of the work that these guys have done. So it's been great to have them around and they know that I'm a student, they know that anything they say I'm going to pick up on. I'm just trying to get better and build on my career, so I listen to everything that they say.

Like a Master Class in acting.

Yes very much so!

What was it like to make your official Broadway debut in A SOLDIER'S PLAY?

It felt great. The interesting thing was it was probably our 30th show at that point. So for me, the Debut felt like when we did our first dress rehearsal, which was a month ago. But it felt great to be able to talk about the play again in front of the media, and to have Charles Fuller and Douglas Turner Ward show up for that show was very powerful for me. And it's been a great blessing, one of the great blessings of my life. I put in a lot of work and I'm proud to be on this stage that many greats have been on before me and be able to carry that torch.

Making your Broadway debut is not the only exciting thing happening in your career right now. Your next film, Sylvie's Love, which you produced and star in, is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Can you tell us a little about that project?

Well it's certainly completely different from A SOLDIER'S PLAY which is very heavy. This is a romantic film about two kids falling in love over a summer in Harlem in 1967 and for one reason or another they break up. And five years later they reconnect and find that their lives have gone separate ways, their careers have gone separate ways, but they realize they still have feelings for each other. So you see them try to navigate those feelings and see if they can go against what the universe is telling them, which is that they should not be together. Yet there is an internal connection that they have and it's really beautiful to watch.

Well congratulations on that and on all your success. It seems like when you put your mind to something you are able to achieve it.

Well I hope so, that's the goal. But it's a lot of hard work, I don't want to downplay the fact that there is a lot of work that goes into it, no matter what it is. You know for guys who have finished playing football, there is some sort of identity crisis I would say, I don't know if that's too strong a word, but you do go through something because you're trying to figure out what's the next thing. You no longer have the 70,000 fans that you run out to and go to work for, or the guys that you go to work with. You suddenly don't have that anymore and you're struggling to figure out what the next thing is. So I feel very lucky and blessed to have found something that I love in the way that I love this work.

Nnamdi Asomugha, who will make his Broadway debut in A Soldier’s Play, produced and starred in the Amazon Studios film Crown Heights. recently completed production on the film Sylvie, which he stars in opposite Tessa Thompson and produces through his iAm21 Entertainment banner. Asomugha also recently finished filming a recurring role in the upcoming Quibi series “When The Street Lights Go On”.

Set to begin previews at the American Airlines Theatre on December 27, 2019, with an official opening on January 21, 2020, A Soldier’s Play is a strictly-limited limited engagement. The show, which is set in 1944, is described as follows: “A Louisiana Army base. A sergeant is murdered—and the crime, with its masterfully unfolded investigation, triggers a gripping barrage of questions about sacrifice, service, and identity in America.”

On the first episode, Kerry Washington sits down with host, Terrell Grice, to talk Oliva Pope's first lines and everything American Son.

“I don't dance now, I make money moves.”