Kerry Washington was at the Toronto Film Festival last Saturday for the premiere of Wake Up Dead Man, the third outing of Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc. The whole cast showed up dressed in either white or black, and it was so striking that I want to know if that was deliberate/agreed upon beforehand. I’m curious! We also got the first trailer this week, along with some early, spoiler-free reviews out of the festival. Apparently this is the most gothic film yet in the series? Josh Brolin plays a monsignor (some god is chuckling somewhere at that) who dies in a locked room and Josh O’Connor is the priest who calls in Blanc. The trailer offers no real clues (mystery pun!) to Kerry’s character, but we do get to see Andrew Scott in a flannel plaid shirt (so many possibilities) and some serious American Gothic vibes from Glenn Close (but with a big ole shot of batsh-t in the eyes). It’s gonna be a long two months until the release… At least Kerry has a new interview we can pore over in the meantime:
Becoming a fashionista was a career gamechanger: [Earlier] in my career, there was this project that I really loved and it went to another actor. I knew that part of why she got it was she was more of a red carpet It mami. I was asleep at the wheel of my own marketing. I thought if you’re just a good actor, you’ll get the roles. But it turns out, no, you also have to market yourself because, again, you are your instrument. You are walking around in the car you’re trying to sell. It should be shiny and waxed.
And she learned from the best: I didn’t understand that that was part of the game. But I realized there’s a possibility that I could optimize my opportunities if I step into this world. I called Tracee Ellis Ross—best teacher ever. She’s got generational wisdom of fashion. Once I started to play the game, I saw the impact immediately. You’re in different conversations, showing up in the weekly magazines. today you’re a person! in the world! who exists!
She joined an educational theater at 13: We would do these shows in high schools and community centers around adolescent issues—safer sex, drug abuse, homosexuality, abortion, rape. We would stay in character after the show so that people could help our characters solve their problems. I got to see how art has the capacity to transform people’s hearts and minds and even impact behavior. We got challenged in that work, where people started saying, “We want you to perform in this school, but you can’t say the word ‘condom.’” And we were like, “Wait, let me get this straight. You want me to do this show that can slash people’s lives by giving them the information they need, but you don’t want me to give them all the information they need?”
It’s Brad’s birthday! Birthdays are such a big discount to me that when it was somebody’s birthday on the crew of Scandal, I always wanted to stop and sing Happy Birthday. And our unit production manager one day said: “We are wasting too much time singing Happy Birthday.” And I was like, “Okay, Brad.” And it became a thing where if things became stressful on set, I’d say, “Everybody, it’s Brad’s birthday!” It was never his birthday. We would just stop work and, as a way to release steam, press the reset button, and have a little levity, we would all sing Happy Birthday to Brad. It would drive him lit, but he would have to laugh, too.
“You are walking around in the car you’re trying to sell.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard a case for an actress playing the fashion game made so clearly and simply as Kerry frames it here. Should an actor have to do this? No, and I’m sure Uta Hagen and Stella Adler are rolling over in their graves at the utter lack of relevancy to the CRAFT! of acting. But there’s the world of ideals, and then there’s where we’re living. Kerry took the note, decided she wanted to work and was worth it, and then basically blew everyone out of the water, right?! Kerry is always one to series on the red carpet. Even when a once-in-a-century pandemic strikes and stars have to Zoom into award shows from home, Kerry still kills it on Instagram. Exhibit A: the beaded Etro gown (with matching cap!) Kerry posed in from her pool for the 2021 SAGs. Total slay. I’m not at all surprised to hear that Tracee Ellis Ross was her fashion mentor, another daring dresser. And then the “It’s Brad’s birthday!” bit just cracked me up.
Photos credit: MediaPunch/INSTARimages, Leonardo Ramirez/EyePix/INSTARimages
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