Kerry Washington was afraid to have her parents read her new memoir, Thicker Than Water, as she reveals family secrets in the tell-all — including the fact that she was conceived from a sperm donor.
The Emmy Award winner, 46, learned the truth just as her signature TV series, Scandal, ended in 2018 after six years.
“We went into family therapy together for a little while,” Washington told the Los Angeles Times in a profile published on Monday, September 25. “We really just started engaging with each other with a lot more transparency and directness and honesty. “
“I had been thrown into this new journey of who I am and what I believe in, in just everything about how my life had turned out,” the actress added. “I had a hard time writing about it then.”
Washington and her husband, former NFL star Nnamdi Asomugha, have two children together, daughter Isabelle, 9, and son Caleb, who turns 7 in October. She is also stepmom of Asomugha’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship.
The couple are very protective of their personal lives. They have never shared photos of their kids, and Washington has not revealed the name of her stepdaughter.
“I have been private about my personal life and very protective of my children, but my parents have always been a part of my public narrative. And so suddenly, when I got this new information, I felt like a fraud,” Washington commented. “I felt like if I wasn’t telling the truth about my parents, I was going to perpetuate a lie. I didn’t want to hide from my story, and if the story was going to be out in some way, I wanted to be in charge of my story.”
Thicker Than Water was published Tuesday, September 26.
“The biggest hurdle was handing it to my parents,” Washington told the outlet. “Once they read it, once they gave me their blessing, I felt like I’m OK.
In the book, Washington writes about the lack of connection she felt with her parents, as well as her panic attacks, sexual trauma and body image issues.
She explained that people who have read the book share with her what they have been hiding about their own lives.
“They tell me their secret. There is healing in the sharing of secrets, in the shedding of that shame,” Washington said. “There’s so much opportunity for community and I feel so seen, because when somebody shares their vulnerability with me, to me that is a signal that they have really seen me and in seeing my vulnerability they feel safe to share.”
During a separate interview with NPR, Washington got into more detail of learning about the sperm donor at the age of 41.
“My parents shared with me that my dad — my beloved dad — is not my biological father,” Washington said. “I was born from a sperm donor, at a time in the ’70s where … it was considered risky and important to remain secret. “I didn’t grow up feeling that kind of deep emotional transparency and intimacy with my mother. But looking back, I think, ‘How could I have?’ She was keeping a secret from me that she could not reveal.”
Since the sperm donor revelation, Washington’s relationship with her father has evolved.
“One of the things that occurred to me when I learned this truth [of my biological father] is that every time I’ve ever told my dad that I love him, it has always been on the condition of a lie,” she recalled to NPR. “And so consciously or unconsciously, there must have been some part of him that thought, ‘She loves me because she thinks I am her dad.’ … And I have now gotten the opportunity to love my dad unconditionally, and he has had the opportunity to feel what it feels like to be loved in vulnerability. … I can’t even begin to articulate the value of that in our relationship and in our family.”
