Kerry Washington explains politics to her kids: 'We talk about bad guys and good guys'

6 November 2020

Kerry Washington is “talking a lot about the election” to her children.

Kerry Washington

The 43-year-old actress has daughter Isabelle Amarachi, six, and son Caleb Kelechi, four, with husband Nnamdi Asomugha, and has said she’s doing what she can to explain the US election - which closed voting this week, but for which there is still no clear winner - to her children in a way that makes sense to them.

Kerry has told her brood that “bad guys and good guys” exist in the real world, and has been trying to use superhero analogies to educate her children.

She said: "We do talk a lot about it, we talk a lot about the election in my house.

"We do talk about bad guys and good guys. They know what superheroes are. In our house, superheroes are the people who vote and the people who work at the polls and the people who community organise and leave the world a better place. And bad guys are people who, I mean I haven’t been this specific with them, but who separate families and take away health care."

The ‘Scandal’ star has been extremely involved with the election in recent months, and has been travelling across the US to encourage people to vote.

And when her two children began asking questions about her trips, the mother of two made sure to explain the meaning behind the work she was doing.

She added: "What I said to them was, 'We really want to go to these places to help people to know how important their voice is and that they need to vote. Because the reason the person who is in the White House is there now, is because not enough people voted.’ And our kids were like, 'Well why didn’t they vote?' And we said, 'They didn’t know how much their voice mattered.’ So we do, we try to talk about it in ways that are not scary.”

The ‘Little Fires Everywhere’ actress was encouraged to be politically active by her own parents, so she now wants to pass that passion on to her kids.

Speaking during an appearance on ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’, she explained: "My mom used to take me into the polling booth with her when I was a kid. And it was like, I thought she was OZ, because she went behind these curtains and she would move levers and I was like ‘My mom is magic, she has all this power.’ ”