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Kerry Washington Shares Rare Detail About Her 3 ‘Amazing’ Kids’ Swimming Skills

Kerry Washington On Her Kids
Kerry Washington. MediaPunch/Shutterstock

Kerry Washington keeps her kids out of the limelight — but that didn’t stop the actress from gushing about their swimming skills on Thursday, February 6.

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“My husband, [Nnamdi Asomugha], teased me that if I did the [DNA test] 23andMe, it would come back 11 percent mermaid,” the American Son star, 43, said in her InStyle March 2020 cover story. “My kids are the same way. They’re just fish.”

The New York native has kept her children under wraps since welcoming Isabella, now 5, in 2014, followed by Caleb, now 3, two years later. Washington is also mom to her husband’s 13-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.

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“These are their lives,” the Scandal alum told the magazine of keeping the trio private. “But it’s not about pulling a Rapunzel and hiding them away in a castle from the world. We don’t want to do that. I think any parent would want to keep kids from a situation that causes them to feel scared. I don’t want them to be exploited, particularly in this social media world.”

This isn’t always easy for the Golden Globe nominee, she admitted. “I have moments where I take pictures or videos of one of my three amazing kids and I want to post it online,” Washington told Today’s Willie Geist in November 2019. “I tend to just send it to my parents or to my shrink instead. I’m like, ‘My kids are so cute, and I don’t want to post about them, so look at how cute they are!’”

In October 2017, the Django Unchained star revealed that she stopped relaxing her hair for her family’s sake. “I like to wear my natural texture, especially now because I have children and I want them to know that their hair is perfect as it is,” she told Allure at the time. “They don’t have to change it or straighten it. They can, but they don’t have to.”

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Washington added, “I’d been relaxing my hair since I was a little girl, so part of it was just wanting to see what would happen if I didn’t. Quitting has been such a time-saver, and my hair feels much healthier now. It’s been fun getting to know my real curls.”

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