Encore

After seven seasons, Olivia Pope will go down as one of the most powerful female leads in TV history. But beyond the Beltway fixer, who is Kerry Washington? Broadway star? Producer? Activist? Yes, yes, and yes

- Janet Mock

The Santa Monica Mountains are blurred by an impenetrable fog when I arrive for a hike along Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles. It’s 6:05am and Kerry Washington rolls down the window of her Audi compact SUV. ‘I’m soooo sorry. It apparently doesn’t open until 6:30am,’ she says, ‘but we can chat in the car. Come in!’

‘The woman has bested nature,’ I think as I slip into the passenger seat. My feet share space with a soccer ball, and she laughs. ‘I’m literally a soccer mom,’ she says, noting that her husband, former NFL cornerback and actor producer Nnamdi Asomugha, bought the car for their full house, including her stepdaughter; their daughter Isabelle, four; and their son Caleb, two.

I know this is the closest I will ever get to the notoriously private celebrity’s off-camera life. She’s managed to be the star of a network series, invited into people’s homes every week on Scandal (aka The Fixer in South Africa), yet maintained enough of a distance at the height of her fame to secretly marry in 2013 and have her first child in 2014 without the world getting access to a single detail. That’s some Olivia Pope shit. The Kerry who slays red carpets and spent seven seasons proving that the colour white was created for her, makes way for off-duty Kerry in a visor and a pouf of curls. She sports a ‘Still With Her’ shirt, sweatpants and New Balance sneakers. The only hint of glamour is princess-cut diamond studs.