Kerry Washington is promoting her project, American Son, on Netflix. Kerry starred in the play last year and based on the trailer, it looks like they tried to stay as close as they could to the single-room set of the play. It also looks really good. Kerry is famously private about her personal life. She rarely discusses her kids or marriage and when she does, it’s merely a mention. Obviously that’s her right and we respect it, it just makes it harder to get good gossip stories. So, Kerry has cleverly found a great work-around: discussing how private she is about her personal life. For instance, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a photo of her kids and it turns out, there’s a reason for that. Kerry told People that she’s torn because she doesn’t want the public to have photos of her kids but they are so cute, she wants to post them. So she does, but only shows her therapist.
Fans of Kerry Washington likely won’t be seeing photos of her kids on social media anytime soon, but it’s harder not to share their cuteness with the world than one might think.
In PEOPLE’s exclusive sneak peek at her sit-down with Sunday Today‘s Willie Geist, airing Sunday at 8 a.m. ET, the American Son actress opens up about the temptation she feels to post images of her three kids publicly — and how she combats it.
“I have moments where I take pictures or videos of one of my three amazing kids and I wanna post it online, and I tend to just send it to my parents or my shrink instead,” says Washington, 42.
“I’m like, ‘My kids are so cute and I don’t wanna post about them, so look at how cute they are!’ ” she adds.
“I have a private Instagram for my shrink and he loves it!” Washington says, joking, “It’s not great when I get parenting feedback, incidentally, based on something he heard me [say] in the background of the video.”
See – brilliant. I could see families doing this, private Insta-rings so they could share photos just among each other. Kerry’s stepdaughter is 13 and her younger kids are 5 and a half and 3, I get keeping their photos off public pages. I should have been more respectful about this when mine were that age. Now we ask their approval and they don’t always grant it, which is fine. But there are a bunch of shots I’d like to get to my mom outside of email. I’m honestly considering this, although I’ll still have to wait until I visit her to show her how to get on Instagram. I’m laughing about Kerry’s therapist commenting on what he hears in the background of the videos, that would happen to me too. I swear, if I’m off camera, I’m a menace.
But this is also brilliant because that’s a fun and gossipy story, but Kerry gave very little up. American Son is about a mother whose son is missing and she and her ex are trying to find out what happened. Motherhood questions are bound to come up, just like they did when she was doing the play. Finding a level playing field in which Kerry can discuss being a parent but not expose her kids in any way is just promotional genius. I tip my hat to you, Ms. Washington.
The cast of American Son on Broadway, Opening Night
Photo credit: WENN Photos
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