‘It Was Really Hard On Jamie And I’: Kerry Washington Admits Challenges Being Whipped And Called The N-Word While Filming ‘Django Unchained’

The lovely Kerry Washington recently visited The Tonight Show with Jay Leno where she discussed some of the challenges faced while filming her latest project, “Django Unchained, which stars the “Scandal” actress and Jamie Foxx,who plays her husband. The film tells the tale of a slave couple who is separated and sold to two different plantations and a husband’s desperate attempt to rescue his wife from the hands of an evil slave owner. The NAACP Image Award-nominated film is said to be extremely graphic at times and provides a true-to-life depiction of what life was really like for the slaves who actually had to live through this era. Kerry expressed that although she respects the authenticity of the movie, she faced some challenges while filming. Check out some of the highlights of her interview.

On the film’s brutal honesty:

“I think it was one of the things that really drew me to the film. I think in a lot of our films, there’s a romanticizing of slavery. If you look at “Gone With The Wind” it was the “good ole days of slavery” when everyone got along, which is not how it really went down.”

On being called the N-word and other vulgar slurs in the film:

“It was really hard to do. I kept telling Quentin [Tarantino] that I was going to send him my extra therapy bills because it was really hard on Jamie and I both.  That actually made us feel extra grateful for anybody that was able to survive it because we barely survived it for pretend for the eight months we were filming.

On her “whipping” scene:

I did [get hit with a whip].  We were filming on a slave plantation so it was an archeology site that you knew that these awful crimes against humanity had actually happened. It was a stunt whip but the guys were very reluctant to do it but I thought we are here and we should honor the story that we’re telling and honor the people who lived through this horrible tragedy and try to be as real as possible.”

Kerry did make a great point, slavery has been romanticized by Hollywood on some levels. It was a dreadful era that should never be watered down. Given Tarantino’s real-life depiction, it sounds like it is going to be a great movie.

Check out video of Kerry’s interview on the next page. Will you be going to see “Django Unchained” when it is released later this month?