Kerry Washington Fan Site

Show business is an odd business where you show up for work and immediately shoot a sex scene. That’s what happened to Kerry Washington and David Ramsey on their first day of work for “Mother and Child.”

“It’s strange because it’s like, ‘Nice to meet you,’ and then you take your clothes off,” Washington tells PopcornBiz. “That only other place you get that is college campuses.”

Samuel L. Jackson said he was surprised that his own sex scene with Naomi Watts in the same movie was scheduled for the first day. But these two played strangers getting together for the first time, so any odd feelings were allowed to come across on screen.

As for Washington, she plays a wife trying desperately to conceive a child with Ramsey in the movie opening in theaters today, so there could be no awkwardness. She understands, “it’s scheduling.” But she could still dream about getting a little help.

“I was speaking at Princeton the other day and I was saying how weird it is to meet someone and then jump right into bed,” she says. “And then I said, ‘You guys just thought I should have just had a couple of beers first.’”

‘Mother and Child’ stars Annette Bening and Kerry Washington talk about the often heartbreaking nature of mother-child relationships.

When a beautiful baby girl was born on Jan. 31, 1977, it was the answer to her parents’ hopes and dreams. Valerie Washington, an education professor from the Bronx, had tried for years to get pregnant. With the first test tube baby a year away, doctors did not know what they do now about maximizing a woman’s fertility. But the Washingtons persevered.

Their much-wanted daughter grew up to be actress Kerry Washington. While she’d heard about those trying years before her birth, it wasn’t until making “Mother and Child” that she fully understood what her mother went through.

Washington plays Lucy, a successful owner of a bakery who is frustrated in her attempts to become pregnant. Feeling her way through the adoption process puts her in touch with the mothers in the title played by Annette Bening, Naomi Watts and Eileen Ryan (Sean Penn’s real-life mother).

“Doing the film definitely brought me closer to my mother because we talked about how much she had wanted to be a mother. Now that I am closer to the age she was when she had me I can understand it more,” Washington says, coddling a cup of coffee at a cafe during the Sundance Film Festival. It’s mid-morning, but she already is photo ready in an emerald-green cowl-neck sweater and oversize pearl hoop earrings.

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2010 Tony nominee David Alan Grier and film star Kerry Washington will play their final performance in the Broadway production of David Mamet’s Race on June 13, while Emmy winner James Spader will depart the cast following the June 20 performance.

The play, directed by Mamet, has also announced that it will now close at the Barrymore Theatre on Saturday, August 21, rather than the previously reported August 23. The current cast also features Richard Thomas. Replacement casting will be announced at a later date.

In the play, three attorneys, two black and one white, are offered a chance to defend a white man charged with a crime against a black woman.

The production features sets by Santo Loquasto, lighting design by Brian Macdevitt, and costumes by Tom Broecker. As recently reported, the play recouped its investment. For TheaterMania’s review of Race, click here. For more information, visit www.raceonbroadway.com.

source: theatermania

Becoming a parent is like falling in love — you can read about it, talk about it, worry about it … but nothing can fully prepare you for it. For an actress who hasn’t been there, playing a woman who struggles to conceive, then finally adopts, then finds she might not be cut out for parenting was a special challenge.

“Every mother told me you don’t know until you’re in it. ‘You think you know, but you don’t know.’ Well, great. That’s helpful. Basically, you’re saying, ‘Good luck, you’re going to fail,’ ” says a laughing Kerry Washington, one of the stars of Rodrigo Garcia’s drama “Mother and Child.”

Washington is Exhibit A of the brainy beauty: magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa at George Washington University; spokeswoman for L’Oreal; a political activist (”A fearsome debater,” director Garcia has said of her) serving on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; just named to People magazine’s list of most beautiful people. But when it comes to this mother-and-child thing, she’s as adrift as the rest of us.

“Here is somebody we literally used to live inside of, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out how to individuate from that person and still remain close,” she says. “What are those challenges when we don’t know who that person is we lived inside of; or when [the child] actually didn’t live inside us?”

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Playing a mother on screen is not new for Kerry Washington. From her first role in ‘Our Song’ to ‘Save the Last Dance’ and ‘Lakeview Terrace,’ pregnancy comes along with the characters she’s played.

Coming up next for the New York City native is another role where motherhood is involved: ”Mother and Child.’

Directed by Rodrigo Garcia, the cast also includes Naomi Watts, Annette Bening, Samuel L. Jackson, Jimmy Smits, David Morse, Shareeka Epps, S. Epatha Merkerson, Tatyana Ali, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Cherry Jones, Amy Brenneman and LaTanya Richardson.

Three women’s lives share a common thread: They have all been profoundly affected by adoption. Karen (Bening) had a baby at 14, gave her up at birth and has been haunted ever since by the daughter she never knew. Elizabeth (Watts) grew up as an adopted child. She’s a bright and ambitious lawyer, but a flinty loner in her personal life. And Lucy (Washington) is embarking on an adoption odyssey with her husband.

Washington spoke to Black Voices recently about her role, as well as her current stint on Broadway in David Mamet’s critically acclaimed play ‘Race.’

What is this film is about?

Kerry Washington: The film is a lot of things. It’s a highly complicated film, but in many ways, it’s about three women who all go through dramatic transformations of character because of relationships in their lives, which, by the way, for three actresses is amazing because we don’t normally get to be the people who go through this. We get to holds the hands of those who are going through the transformation. All of them, through their relationships, are transformed. None of us are the women that you meet at the beginning of the film. Naomi’s character goes from someone who tied her tubes as a teenager to someone who is excited about being a mother and for the first time is willing to look for her mother. Karen, who’s played by Annette Bening, transforms completely, and my character wouldn’t let her visit a baby at the beginning of the film had they met. A lot of what goes on is the journeys we make as human beings.

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Dressed in purple and black, with obligatory star shades, Kerry Washington was spotted yesterday afternoon, walking into The Ed Sullivan Theater for an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman, which will air tonight. This weekend her new movie, Mother and Child, will be in theatres in a limited NY/LA release.

Trina, Kerry Washington, and Queen Latifah all stopped by “106 & Park” three days ago to kick it with Terrence & Rocsi.  For an appearance on 106 & Park at BET’s N.Y.C. studios, Washington accessorized a tie-dye Plastic Island sheath with Giles & Brother dangling earrings, a chunky Manu cocktail ring and Alejandro Ingelmo patent platforms.

“I hired this really beautiful woman to pretend to be my mother. She’s actually an actress,” Washington cracks.

Her mom retorts that her daughter “was coached to say all these really nice things.”

In reality, the two have a warm, supportive and bantering dynamic. They walk into Alice’s Tea Cup holding hands before settling in for afternoon libations.

Washington is appearing in the Broadway play Race while promoting her drama Mother and Child, in theaters. It’s an intimate look at three maternal relationships; Washington plays Lucy, a perfectionist who is eager to adopt because she’s unable to conceive. Her movie mom is more critical than supportive. Washington’s real-life mother, Valerie, a retired education professor and schoolteacher, inspired her performance, but in an unexpected way.

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