On how Olivia Pope changed her life: "It's impossible to say that Olivia Pope hasn't been one of the most transformative roles for me. I've never played a character for this long. Olivia Pope also took my anonymity away. Before, I was a character actor: Nobody really knew that the girl from Save the Last Dance was the same girl from The Last King of Scotland. So I could show up and be a person in the public eye when it was useful, then dip out and have my life. Olivia Pope has really changed that."
On how long she'll stay on Scandal: "It's not really up to me. It's up to Shonda [Rhimes] and to the network. Shonda has said from the beginning that she kind of knows how it ends. So I'm trusting her to guide the arc. It's also important for me to do other work — and playing Olivia gave me the opportunity to become a producer. The charge of my production company, Simpson Street, is to tell stories that are about people, places, and situations that may not always be considered by the mainstream. Inclusivity is not about, you know, creating a world where straight white men have no voice; it's about creating a world where we all have a voice. So I'm excited to start that new journey, as a producer."
On the deft way Scandal handles race: "In the first season it was as if Olivia Pope was raceless. There was no denying that Olivia was a black woman, because I'm a black woman, playing her in badass white trench coats that call to attention the fact that I'm not looking like anybody else on television. But we didn't talk about her identity as a black person. [Since then] the writers have become more and more willing to deal with race. When Olivia was kidnapped, it was not lost on me that the fictional president of the United States was willing to go to war to save one black woman at a time when hundreds of black women were missing in Nigeria and we were begging the world to pay attention. Shonda was saying, 'The life of a black woman matters.' With her dad — he is trying to instill in her this generational learning about what it means to be a person of color in the United States. And Olivia is at odds with balancing the truth of his understanding with her ability to achieve things he was never able to."
![On how Olivia Pope changed her life: "It's impossible to say that Olivia Pope hasn't been one of the most transformative roles for me. I've never played a character for this long. Olivia Pope also took my anonymity away. Before, I was a character actor: Nobody really knew that the girl from Save the Last Dance was the same girl from The Last King of Scotland. So I could show up and be a person in the public eye when it was useful, then dip out and have my life. Olivia Pope has really changed that."
On how long she'll stay on Scandal: "It's not really up to me. It's up to Shonda [Rhimes] and to the network. Shonda has said from the beginning that she kind of knows how it ends. So I'm trusting her to guide the arc. It's also important for me to do other work — and playing Olivia gave me the opportunity to become a producer. The charge of my production company, Simpson Street, is to tell stories that are about people, places, and situations that may not always be considered by the mainstream. Inclusivity is not about, you know, creating a world where straight white men have no voice; it's about creating a world where we all have a voice. So I'm excited to start that new journey, as a producer."
On the deft way Scandal handles race: "In the first season it was as if Olivia Pope was raceless. There was no denying that Olivia was a black woman, because I'm a black woman, playing her in badass white trench coats that call to attention the fact that I'm not looking like anybody else on television. But we didn't talk about her identity as a black person. [Since then] the writers have become more and more willing to deal with race. When Olivia was kidnapped, it was not lost on me that the fictional president of the United States was willing to go to war to save one black woman at a time when hundreds of black women were missing in Nigeria and we were begging the world to pay attention. Shonda was saying, 'The life of a black woman matters.' With her dad — he is trying to instill in her this generational learning about what it means to be a person of color in the United States. And Olivia is at odds with balancing the truth of his understanding with her ability to achieve things he was never able to."](https://media1.popsugar-assets.com/files/ps-image-unavailable.png "On how Olivia Pope changed her life: \"It's impossible to say that Olivia Pope hasn't been one of the most transformative roles for me. I've never played a character for this long. Olivia Pope also took my anonymity away. Before, I was a character actor: Nobody really knew that the girl from Save the Last Dance was the same girl from The Last King of Scotland. So I could show up and be a person in the public eye when it was useful, then dip out and have my life. Olivia Pope has really changed that.\"
On how long she'll stay on Scandal: \"It's not really up to me. It's up to Shonda [Rhimes] and to the network. Shonda has said from the beginning that she kind of knows how it ends. So I'm trusting her to guide the arc. It's also important for me to do other work — and playing Olivia gave me the opportunity to become a producer. The charge of my production company, Simpson Street, is to tell stories that are about people, places, and situations that may not always be considered by the mainstream. Inclusivity is not about, you know, creating a world where straight white men have no voice; it's about creating a world where we all have a voice. So I'm excited to start that new journey, as a producer.\"
On the deft way Scandal handles race: \"In the first season it was as if Olivia Pope was raceless. There was no denying that Olivia was a black woman, because I'm a black woman, playing her in badass white trench coats that call to attention the fact that I'm not looking like anybody else on television. But we didn't talk about her identity as a black person. [Since then] the writers have become more and more willing to deal with race. When Olivia was kidnapped, it was not lost on me that the fictional president of the United States was willing to go to war to save one black woman at a time when hundreds of black women were missing in Nigeria and we were begging the world to pay attention. Shonda was saying, 'The life of a black woman matters.' With her dad — he is trying to instill in her this generational learning about what it means to be a person of color in the United States. And Olivia is at odds with balancing the truth of his understanding with her ability to achieve things he was never able to.\"")
