Kerry Washington frames herself as a collaborative artist building meaningful work with trusted female partners like Elisabeth Moss, emphasizing artistic growth and creative community over any industry friction.
Insiders note that Washington's insistence on LA production and near-total creative control via Simpson Street isn't just preference — it's calculated leverage. Three female leads sharing equal footing is still rare enough to get press attention, which tells you something about where the industry actually stands.
Washington confirmed she's currently filming Netflix's 'An Innocent Girl' in New Jersey while also producing The Whoopi Monologues at Lincoln Center this summer through Simpson Street. She described working on Ben Affleck's Animals as 'one of the most emotionally rigorous jobs I've had.' Lesli Linka Glatter lost her house to fires right before production began on Imperfect Women and still showed up to direct Episode 1 — taking only one day to regroup.
Kerry Washington isn't just acting anymore — she's running a power structure. And between the internal-drama stakes of Imperfect Women and her deep dive with Ben Affleck's Artists Equity, she's making it very clear that nuanced female storytelling is non-negotiable. Watch this space.
Kerry Washington doesn't do anything halfway, and her latest project makes that clearer than ever. The star and executive producer of Apple TV+'s psychological thriller Imperfect Women sat down with Deadline and pulled zero punches about what it actually takes to get complex female-driven content made in an industry she describes as struggling. "This is a challenging time in a lot of ways," Washington said, noting that she personally insisted the series shoot in Los Angeles — not some tax incentive workaround location.
That's not nothing. In an era where productions routinely relocate for budget reasons, Washington's insistence on keeping Imperfect Women rooted in LA speaks to both her leverage and her priorities. The show, based on Araminta Hall's novel, flips perspective across eight episodes — moving from one character's point of view to another, including that of a dead woman.
Washington called the structural framework "spectacularly creative" but also framed it as something more deliberate: a storytelling exercise in empathy at a moment when, she noted, we all need reminding that we may not understand the full picture until we stand in someone else's shoes. That's a lot of thematic weight for a psychological thriller, but Imperfect Women is clearly operating on multiple levels. Washington plays Eleanor, a character whose journey spans the first three episodes before the narrative baton passes to Kate Mara and then Elisabeth Moss — and Washington was acutely aware of shifting her performance depending on whose episode it was.
"By the time we were in Episodes 4 and 5, I knew my job was to really support Kate Mara," she said. "And then in 6 and 7, although 7 is shared, it was to really support Lizzie." That's not just acting — that's a carefully choreographed ensemble handoff that required serious trust between three leading women. One detail that stuck out: Lesli Linka Glatter directed the pilot.
At the time of production, she had literally lost her home to fires. Washington recounted that Glatter called showrunner Annie Weisman and said, "I want to meet with you, but all my notes burned in the fire, so I'm going to need another day." One day. That's it.
The woman lost everything and still showed up to set shortly after. Washington described it as the moment she felt like they "really have a show," crediting Glatter's "care" and the "clarity that she fights for." You don't get that kind of dedication accidentally — you build environments where people want to deliver that, and that's clearly what Simpson Street does. The real meat of Washington's philosophy?
She doesn't judge her characters. Playing Eleanor meant navigating some genuinely dark moral terrain — a character who makes "horrible" decisions, as Washington put it herself. But Kate Mara reportedly cut through all the hand-wringing with a blunt observation: "She's dead, who gives a sh*t." Washington laughed recounting it but acknowledged that perspective matters.
"People don't do bad things to be bad, people make difficult choices because they feel like they don't have other options," she said. "I have to understand where the decision comes from — what broken place is this decision coming from? What longing am I trying to feed or what wound am I trying to heal?" That's not just method acting — that's a full psychological framework, and it explains why Eleanor lands as complicated rather than cartoonish.
And then there's Animals. Washington's involvement in Ben Affleck's film via his production company Artists Equity wasn't just a paycheck gig — she was there to "really be under the hood over there and see what they're creating." She called working with Affleck "one of the most emotionally rigorous jobs I've had," while also praising his work as a director. Matt Damon and Affleck's partnership at Artists Equity clearly intrigues her from a producing standpoint, not just an acting one.
Right now she's filming Netflix's An Innocent Girl in New Jersey, and this summer Simpson Street is producing The Whoopi Monologues at Lincoln Center — reworking Whoopi Goldberg's iconic decades-old one-woman show into a five-actress production. Washington noted that everyone from Tracee Ellis Ross to Robin Thede to Pedro Pascal has cited that original show as formative. She's not just preserving legacy here; she's weaponizing it.
