American Daughter

The Bronx’s Kerry Washington Jumps From Her Career-defining Role On The Abc Hit Tv Show, “scandal,” To The Broadway Stage In “American Son.”

- Bob Cannon

KERRY WASHINGTON has ruled the world. At least that’s the impression you’d get from watching her for seven years on the TV show “Scandal.” As Washington, D.C., political fixer Olivia Pope, Washington delivered a steady diet of thunderous soliloquies that let her dominate the TV screen as few actresses ever have.

Now she is bringing that same passion to the Broadway stage in Christopher Demos-Brown’s new play, “American Son,” at the Booth Theatre. The show began previews on Oct. 6, opening on Nov. 4.

“American Son” is the gripping tale of a Florida mother searching for her missing son, a story that brings together issues of race, class, corruption and crime. For the politically active Washington, the play was an irresistible mix. “I think it takes a lot of the difficult conversations that we’re trying to have as a country—and quite honestly as a world—and it puts them in the bodies of these very real people,” she reflects.

Her social conscience sprang from an achievement-oriented upbringing. She was born Kerry Marisa Washington on Jan. 31, 1977, in the Bronx, the daughter of real estate broker Earl Washington and his wife, Valerie, a professor and educational consultant.

Washington attended the tony Spence School on the Upper East Side, and performed with the TADA! Youth Theater teen group, where one of her occasional dance teachers was a fellow Bronx girl named Jennifer Lopez.

More importantly, it’s where Washington caught the acting bug. “I was a very precocious and overactive child,” she admits, “and my mother, being an educator, looked for outlets for me. So she enrolled me in all kinds of extracurricular activities. And lucky for me acting was one of them.