Thicker than Water: A Memoir

by Kerry Washington

“What will you do instead?” It was late on a February morning in 2018, at Sunset Gower Studios in Hollywood, California. I was standing on a bare wooden platform behind the wall of a fake Truman Balcony. And it was Bellamy Young who had just asked that question—or rather, her character, Mellie Grant. Emotions were running high. This would be the last scene of Scandal that Bellamy and I would share after arcing through seven seasons of emotional complexity as our characters Olivia Pope and Mellie Grant journeyed from enemies to allies, and then to partners, and finally, to friends. And in real life, during that time, Bellamy and I had come to share a sense of sisterhood that neither of us could have predicted. In the earliest days of Scandal, Bellamy’s character, Mellie, was only a small supporting role on the show. Bellamy was originally cast to be a “day player.” Day players are actors who are cast in a role in which their work can be completed in one day. In our pilot episode (which took, in total, ten days to film), Bellamy had just three lines, one of which was simply to proclaim my character’s nickname, “Liiiiiiiiiv!” as she welcomed me into a quiet corner of a pretend Camp David. By the end of the first season of Scandal, it was clear that Bellamy Young was a force to be reckoned with, and her character was a vital element in the magic alchemy that made Scandal a success. By the end of the series, Bellamy and our team of writers, led by Shonda Rhimes, our brilliant s...