Kerry Washington says the improved offering in women-focused films and TV shows has a lot to do with female creators “throwing our own parties”.
The US actor, 49, stars in Apple TV’s new adaptation of Araminta Hall’s murder mystery novel Imperfect Women, along with Elisabeth Moss and Kate Mara.
It follows three old college friends Eleanor (Washington), Nancy (Mara) and Mary (Moss), whose very different lives are disrupted by a devastating crime that surfaces buried secrets and unspoken rivalries.
In an interview with The Guardian, the Scandal star said the offering of complex female roles was “better” than it once was and suggested this was mostly because “so many of us have become producers”.
Washington is a producer on Imperfect Women through her company, Simpson Street, which also worked on the 2020 Emmy-nominated mini-series Little Fires Everywhere.
Meanwhile, Reece Witherspoon, with whom Washington starred in Little Fires Everywhere, has also become a production powerhouse, working on hit films including the Oscar-nominated Gone Girl andWild (both 2014), as well as the Apple TV drama The Morning Show.
Washington’s Imperfect Women co-star Moss is also an executive producer through her production company, Love & Squalor Pictures, whose previous credits include the 2020 biographical drama Shirley, about horror and mystery novelist Shirley Jackson.
“We’re not sitting at home waiting to be invited to the party,” Washington observed. “We’re throwing our own parties and our parties centre us. That’s part of why there are more of these stories. It’s not by any means equitable. But it’s a lot better.”
In the same interview, Washington urged film and TV fans to embrace the idea of seeing “multiple points of view” as an exercise in “empathy and sympathy”.
She discussed how audiences can engage more positively with male anti-heroes onscreen, while female characters are still expected to be redeemable in order for audiences to connect with them.
However, in Imperfect Women, Washington said, viewers are invited to see events from each of the three main characters’ perspectives.
“At a time when we are so tribal and so unwilling in culture to see things from somebody else’s perspective, I think allowing an audience to actually walk through a set of facts from multiple points of views is a real exercise in empathy and sympathy – and a service.”
Imperfect Women airs on Apple TV from 18 March.
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