Kerry Washington has claimed that there is an "imbalance of power" within the movie industry.
The 43-year-old actress has appeared in movies such as ‘Django Unchained’ and stars alongside Reese Witherspoon in web drama ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ and reveals that she had bonded with colleagues over the lack of females on set in productions.
Kerry told NET-A-PORTER’s digital magazine Porter: "One thing that a lot of us have talked about is this idea that, because of the imbalance of power and the delineation of who gets to be the protagonist, so often in our careers, there was one woman on a set. We were siloed. And so we were told about each other. And the story was often, ‘She’s difficult. She’s needy. She’s crazy. She’s unpredictable. She’s a diva.’"
Kerry insists that what is redressing the imbalance of power is the fact that actresses now talk to each other openly about the difficulties they have encountered in Hollywood.
She explained: "Now we talk to each other, we work together and we know that not to be true. Like even with ‘Little Fires Everywhere’, it deals with the nuances of womanhood and motherhood regardless of outward identity."
Kerry also claims that there is a lack of understanding towards her perspective of the industry which gives her "a lot to say", even if she doesn’t consider herself to be a "leader".
She said: "I don’t even know that I saw myself as a leader, I just saw myself as a person with a lot to say. I think the more I started to work in this industry, I started to understand that there weren’t a lot of people who understood my perspective as a woman or as a woman of colour in power, and I had to create that opportunity."
Kerry Washington: There is an imbalance of power in the acting industry
