In her new memoir titled Thicker Than Water, Kerry Washington explains why her role in the 2004 film Against the Ropes was her last time playing the “white girl’s best friend.”
“In it, I played Meg Ryan’s coworker and confidante – this was becoming a new niche for me, the white girl’s best friend,” the Little Fires Everywhere actress writes in her book. Washington played the best friend to Julia Stiles in 2001’s Save the Last Dance as well as Caroline Dhavernas‘ best friend in the scrapped 2004 pilot for Wonderfalls.
“‘When Harry Met Sally’ is, to this day, one of my top three movies of all time, so once I’d played Meg Ryan’s best friend, playing the role against anyone else would have been a lateral move,” she writes. “It’s not that I wanted to be the star of the film; I wanted my characters to be in a story of their own. I didn’t want to be an accessory to a white woman’s journey.”
Washington would eventually go on to star as the first Black female lead on network television in nearly 40 years with Scandal. On Wednesday (September 27th), she shared a video of her reuniting with her Scandal costar, Tony Goldwyn, for an event promoting her new book at George Washington University. “Hi D.C #Olitz is ready for you,” she wrote.