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What happens when an award-winning actress, producer, director, author, and activist uses her platform to shine a light on the criminal justice system? Kerry Washington’s recent projects, UnPrisoned and Daughters, tell stories of incarceration, family separation, unification, and love that we rarely get to see. In our conversation, she explains how portraying a daughter navigating her father’s return from prison transformed her understanding of reentry and gets personal about how the system has impacted her own family.

You can check out Unprisoned on Hulu and stream Daughters on Netflix.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Ana Zamora, Kerry Washington

Ana Zamora  01:39

Welcome to When It Clicked, I’m your host, Ana Zamora, founder and CEO of The Just Trust, an organization fighting for a criminal justice system that works better for all of us. In this series, I’m talking to people from all walks of life to ask why they’re working to transform our justice system. We may come to this issue for very different reasons, but ultimately, we all want the same thing, to create safety and opportunities for all. Some of my guests have made mistakes in the past and have been to prison. Some have a family member who has been to prison like I do, and others are driven by human rights, racial justice, faith or economics, whatever their reason, all are welcome at this table today, we’re talking to Kerry Washington. Where do I even begin with Kerry? She’s a force captivating audiences with her portrayal of complex characters and incredible productions, year after year and off screen, she’s exploring thought provoking and universal human experiences with her production company, Simpson Street. In recent years, she’s also taken on a new role, using her platform to shine a light on the criminal justice system. Kerry recently starred in the Hulu series unprisoned, which tells the story of a father returning home from prison to live with his daughter and grandson. She’s also a producer on daughters, a documentary about a unique prison program in Washington, DC, where incarcerated fathers host a daddy daughter dance through the mosaic of Kerry’s diverse work, she’s helping show just how deeply the justice system shapes our society. I’m so glad Kerry has brought us these powerful stories, giving voice to people impacted by incarceration, honoring their full humanity, and also weaving in important themes like accountability, rehabilitation and personal transformation. I’m beyond excited to have Kerry with us today to talk about her journey into this work and to learn more about when it clicked for her. Okay, let’s dive into my conversation with Kerry.

 

Kerry Washington  03:52

Hi.

 

Ana Zamora  03:54

Wow, thank you so much for taking the time to talk today. It is an incredible honor to have you on this podcast. So in every conversation I’m having for this show, I’ve been asking people about how they used to view the criminal justice system and when and why they started to shift their perspective. So my own journey started when my brother went to prison and suddenly the system wasn’t so black and white to me anymore, which was really different from how I first thought about it as a kid. You know, I was raised to believe, like so many of us are, that if you did something bad, you should be punished and you should go to jail, and that bad people go to jail. I’d love to hear from you, you know, a little bit about what you thought of or what you were taught about punishment and justice when you were a little kid.

 

Kerry Washington  04:44

The first thing I think of when you asked me that question is, I think of my mom, who’s an educator, who got a lot of crap from people when I was growing up because there was no corporal punishment in our home. I was never spaying. Changed. I was never beaten. There was never there were never physical consequences for my behavior. That doesn’t mean that there weren’t consequences, but it was never through physical punishment, and people were very critical of that choice of hers in the 80s in our community, in the black community, in the black community in particular, and so I think where my mom was coming from as an educator, as an elementary school educator, was that she wanted to parent with a very high level of dignity and humanity. So I think that was like an undercurrent of my understanding of of what punishment looks like in the home, when I was in college, and I write about this a little bit in my memoir thicker than water, I learned that my dad had been investigated by the IRS for a decade for some financial fraud, and I had to write a letter to the judge to try to impact my dad’s sentencing.

 

Ana Zamora  06:13

Oh, wow.

 

Kerry Washington  06:14

And that was the first time that I knew that my dad had been in this legal process they I think, you know, if they could have had it their way, like a lot of things in life, which is what I write about in the memoir, they would have never told me that my dad had been investigated, that they had been working with a lawyer, that he was going to be sentenced, but because his lawyer really thought that it would have a positive impact on his sentencing. If I wrote this letter and said, like, really, my dad has suffered enough. He understands what he did wrong, the impact on our family. If he was to go to prison would be tremendously bad. And so I think in the end, my dad was sentenced to financial fines and community service. That vulnerability for me of knowing that my dad could go away had me engage with the system in a different way. And one of the things that I remember my dad saying when he was forced to tell me because he needed this letter from me, one of the things he said to me was, I’m really upset because none of the men in my family have had a criminal record, and that is so rare in the black community to have a family like that. And I had never thought about it in those terms before. I didn’t understand that it was like a miracle of sociology that we hadn’t had that, that he hadn’t experienced that. And so I think that that whole journey really shifted my sense of where I fit into the justice system and how that system impacts my life and the lives of the people that I love most.

 

Ana Zamora  08:14

Absolutely I mean that is like an all too common theme of what we’re exploring in this podcast. And you know, through my career as a criminal justice advocate, that I have learned, you know, having a family member who has come into contact with the justice system like like you did in advocating for your father, and like I did watching, you know, as a little girl, watching my older brother cycle in and out of jail and prison for dumb things, you know, for kids stuff. And it just has. It has a way of just completely writing over everything that we were taught or see in the movies or see on TV about crime, punishment and the justice system. Thank you so much for sharing that with me, I want to get into some of your incredible work, especially unprisoned, because it’s such a fantastic show, and there’s so much to dig into about it, you know. And for listeners who haven’t had the pleasure of watching it yet, it’s a must see show, first of all, on Hulu. And it’s a show about a woman, Paige, who has to adjust to some challenges in welcoming her father home from prison after he had been incarcerated for many years. It’s based on Tracy McMillan’s own life. So Kerry, to start, I’d love to know what drew you to this story, what drew you to this project?

 

Kerry Washington  09:38

Well, thank you so much for for saying everything that you said about the show. I’m so proud of the show, and I really, you know, we have two seasons on Hulu, and I just, I think one of the things I’m most proud of with the show is the tone of the show, because it’s dealing with some really tough issues, but it’s not a tough. Show. It’s a show that’s filled with a lot of love and joy and humanity as it’s grappling with the very real challenges of being a returning citizen and loving a returning citizen. And for me, when I first read the pilot episode, I thought, oh, well, this is really interesting. I don’t know that this that I will relate to this story, but I really, I’m a fan of Tracy McMillan’s. And I thought, you know, let’s and she’s, she’s amazing. Let’s give it a try. And I read this script, and I was so immediately, I felt a kindred spirit. Immediately with Tracy and her dad, and because the show is really about how to love an imperfect parent and how to grapple which every parent is imperfect, myself included. I don’t mean like I have imperfect parents. I mean I am an imperfect parent, right? Like nobody does it perfectly. So how to love an imperfect parent, and how to come to terms with how their imperfections have impacted us, and then how to reparent ourselves, to kind of heal the places where they weren’t able to show up fully. Because nobody does this perfectly. So I related a lot to Paige and and to her navigation with her dad. You know, I again, I write in thicker than water, a lot about how I really had to find my way with my dad through life, because we had kind of a disjointed dynamic with each other, not because he was cycling in and out of prison, but because my dad is not my biological father, and I didn’t know that. And so there was sort of a disconnect between us, but I I really just loved the idea of telling this joyful, wonderful, relatable story about a family that I think we often think is those other people exactly so for I think for a lot of viewers, they may have had an experience like me, where they felt like, oh, I don’t really know that I’ve been impacted in a huge way by the criminal justice system, but I’ll tune in, and Then suddenly I see myself, and I see my family members, and I’m relating more than I ever thought I could. And then there was this whole segment of our audience that I’m almost even more proud of, people who were like, This is my story. I’ve never seen it on television before. I’m so grateful. I have had a parent who’s been in and out of the system. I’ve had a sister who’s been in and out of the system. My husband is is incarcerated. My son is, you know, there, there were so many people we we premiered the show at a film festival called South by Southwest. And we did four sit down interviews with journalists of all different races, one white, one black, one Asian, South Asian, and one Latinx. Three out of the four journalists had a parent who had been incarcerated, and that was not they hadn’t been assigned to the show. Because of that, they were like, randomly assigned to the show and and were able to share that the show allowed them to shake off some of the shame that their family or that they had been grappling with feeling like they were the only ones. When you go like, absolutely you can’t be the only ones. 79 million Americans have re entered society and have a criminal record. That’s one in three Americans. So of course, you’re not the only one, and we should be telling your story and lifting it up and normalizing it, not to make the atrocities of the so called justice system normal, but to let people know that you’re not alone and that there is community, a large community of us, who are impacted and who can fight for change in these systemic policies that affect so many more of us than we would have known.

 

Ana Zamora  14:05

Oh, absolutely. I mean, I you know, from the perspective of somebody who has directly experienced the shame of an incarcerated family member, and especially in my own family, we’re an immigrant family, so you add that on top of it, and it’s very complicated, and shame is just so deeply rooted in my family, around my brother’s experience, and so the power of unprisoned is exactly that it just gives us a permission structure to kind of feel that shame and move past it in community. As you said, it’s really beautiful. I also just think that unprisoned is tackling a really important issue, which is, you know, re entry and how challenging the re entry journey is for individuals who are experiencing it. But also, so their families?

 

Kerry Washington  15:01

Yeah, I think it’s so funny, because we think when we’re not intimately involved with incarcerated folks, you feel like, okay, you serve your sentence. Your sentence is complete, but people carry that sentence with them for the rest of their lives, and that’s often because of these policies and practices that keep formerly incarcerated people out of opportunities, whether it’s voting, finding housing, finding a job, like the basic necessities, to be able to get back on your feet, sustain yourself, be a member of your community, that stuff can feel or actually be out of reach for so many people. And so I think, I think by telling that story, by not just, you know, I always think behind every statistic is a story. Behind every policy is a human being. And so when we can give voice to stories about people who’ve been impacted. It helps to make the criminal legal system less abstract and and more tangible, human, accessible, understandable.

 

Ana Zamora  16:14

Yeah, absolutely. Um, I mean, it sounds like you, you know a lot about this stuff, even before unprisoned. I’d be curious if you learned anything new about the re entry journey or challenges faced by families or formerly incarcerated returning citizens. Was there a moment in the making of the show that was kind of an aha moment or a learning moment for you?

 

Kerry Washington  16:37

I think there were so many moments in making the show that were aha moments to me, even like, there’s a great scene in the first episode where she, you know, he says, you know, I was always there for you. And she says, if by there for me, you mean, and she imitates the recording that you get from prisons when somebody calls. And it’s those kind of details where you see how people’s lives are impacted in really specific ways. Like, what presence means? What does it mean to be there for somebody or not be there for somebody? Even that idea of like, you know, there are moments when they hug on the show, father and daughter, and you realize, like, these are two people who have not been able to hug a lot. There are two people who just have not been able to touch each other.

 

Ana Zamora  17:24

It’s a totally new thing, amazing.

 

Ana Zamora  17:46

Obviously people know you through your on screen roles, some of the most iconic roles that we have, but your impact work behind the scenes with Simpson Street, your production company is just as powerful. In my humble opinion. I Love You know, I love that there is such a strong focus on centering voices and stories from folks who we don’t often see portrayed in media. For example, daughters you know, which is a now Netflix documentary set in Washington, DC, that follows four girls, four little girls, as they prepare for a daddy daughter dance with their dads who happen to be incarcerated, speaking of stories that will be marked into my brain for eternity, this is one of them. You know, it is such a moving film that really shows how rehabilitation programs in prison, especially ones that teach and promote family reunification and parenting, make a massive difference. So Kerry, what is it about this particular story that made you want to get involved, that you chose this story to tell?

 

Kerry Washington  19:49

Well, the filmmakers, Natalie and Angela, their mission was just so inspiring to me. When I heard about this film, I heard about these two filmmakers, one of whom really helped to start the. Father daughter dance program, that they wanted to center the girls in this film, and not make it a prison story, and not make it a film just about the dads in the father daughter program, which is hugely important that the work that these dads do and their journey is so beautiful, and it’s beautifully captured in the film, but centering the girls felt like such a heroic act on the part of these filmmakers, and I knew that, in a way, this was the pre unprisoned, right? This was the origin story. This was like being able to step back in time and see how Paige became Paige, and to see how we can shift the generational trauma around how these systems impact families. And I felt like when I saw the film, it was made with such love and care. I mean, it took eight years to film it and edit it, and I didn’t know that, yeah, and their decision to continue telling the story after the dance, right? Helped, again, to not just capture the magic of these dances and the father daughter program, but the reality of this really complex story of these young women and who they are and who they’re becoming, there was, there’s just so much that I really love and respect about the film and about the ongoing work that Angela is doing with girls for change, and about the impact that this program has. I mean, 95% of the dads who participate in the dances they do not return to prison. Wow. That is extraordinary.

 

Ana Zamora  21:45

That’s the mark of an effective program.

 

Kerry Washington  21:48

Exactly, so it felt like, Oh, more people need to know about this program. More More people need to know that there are ways to to really have reform and rehabilitation happen in prison, and have it not just be about punishment and suffering, I’m really drawn to the hard work that fathers and daughters do to kind of rise above the limitations that culture and society place on you to find deeper levels of love and understanding of each other.

 

Ana Zamora  22:24

It’s such a beautiful and powerful theme, the father daughter theme, that you clearly are winding through, unprisoned, through daughters and through your own memoir, as you say. I mean, I think it’s, you know, when you talked about telling stories and they get political, because so much is political these days. I feel like how you have chose the stories you’ve chosen, and how you’ve threaded them together, and your approach to these projects are, it’s working to de politicize this work and bring in the humanity in some really important ways. So on the theme of father daughter, you know, I would, I would love to know, you know what, what you want to say to incarcerated dads and their daughters on the outside, after having been part of these projects, what messages would you love to send?

 

Kerry Washington  23:13

I think part of what I want to say is, we see you. I think that’s so much of what we’re trying to say with this work with this content is you matter, your stories matter. I know these systems can make you feel invisible or unimportant, but actually, the ways in which you interact with our systems of power is so vital to our understanding of who we are and what we need to do better. The thing that has that I have really learned so much about because of daughters is that so many prisons have increasingly stopped in person, visits, touch visits, and when I think about our film, our documentary, in those moments where they get to hold each other, which is just such a necessity for human beings to be able to touch one another and be in community in that way. And so it’s so dehumanizing to end touch visits, and this has been going on way before COVID, that families are resorting instead to video calls and phone calls, and that is really dehumanizing.

 

Ana Zamora  24:26

It is, and it’s counter to the healing and rehabilitation.

 

Kerry Washington  24:30

Yes, if the point is to help people get better, why take away the thing that helps us be most in touch with our hearts and our goodness.

 

Ana Zamora  24:42

Especially when so much of the public right across these divides that we have, whether they’re political divides, ideological divides, you know, urban, rural divides, whatever the vast majority of people in this country believe and want to see rehabilitation. And healing in the criminal justice system. They they want people to come out and succeed better, right? And so if human contact and family connection helps that journey, we should be doubling down on it, not getting rid of it. So beautiful, um, you know, obviously a big theme of this podcast, and a big theme of the work that we do at the just trust is you know about how important it is, and you’ve talked about this already, in recognizing the full humanity of incarcerated people. This is obviously a theme in your work as well. So what role do you think storytelling plays in helping to change public perception of currently and formerly incarcerated people. What? What are you hoping that storytelling can do?

 

Kerry Washington  25:47

Yeah, I mean, you know, great storytelling helps you to it helps to crack your heart open. And I think both of these shows, this show, in this film, do that, you know, people tell me that in in both watching unprisoned and watching daughters, that there have been moments where they’ve laughed, moments where they’ve cried, moments where they’ve just felt like their heart was bursting open. And that’s what we need in culture right now. We need less hardened hearts and more hearts that can be open to each other, to be willing to make change that honors each other’s humanity.

 

Ana Zamora  26:28

That’s right? Yeah, we often say at The Just Trust, because we’re very focused on changing laws right, recognizing that our laws are a big part of the problem and but you can’t change laws until you also change hearts and minds. And I love, I love what you said that storytelling, you know, allows the heart to really explore some of these ideas and themes in order to help drive systemic change. I think it’s a really important ingredient.

 

Ana Zamora  27:11

Another theme that I think is really important and that we explore a lot at The Just Trust is this idea that people should also be held accountable for their actions, but that we need to think really differently about how accountability happens. And I for one, don’t believe that accountability is punishment. I don’t think that those two things are the same thing. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on accountability and what does it look like to hold people accountable who have committed serious crimes or hurt other people. What does accountability look like?

 

Kerry Washington  28:27

Oh, wow. I mean, I feel like you would understand and know how to answer this question in a much more nuanced and accurate way than I would. I’m super curious for you what the difference is and why it’s so important to talk about it.

 

Ana Zamora  28:44

Yeah, I mean, I think accountability is much like re entry is a journey, and it’s it’s going to look different for everybody. But I think at the core of true accountability is an understanding of the harm that was created, and you know, the ability to make amends and to ask for forgiveness both of yourself and the person that you harmed. And so punishment, to me, doesn’t do any of that. Punishment is just the act of punishment, right? It’s not a process for transformation or growth or forgiveness or healing. And what I would like to see is, how can we reshape our criminal justice system so that it actually helps people succeed on that accountability journey.

 

Kerry Washington  29:38

That’s really beautiful. I love that you talk about it as a process, because I think so much of this is about actually willing to be in process like this kind of change is messy.

 

Ana Zamora  29:50

Oh, yeah.

 

Kerry Washington  29:50

And, I think one of the great things about a podcast like this, or projects like unprisoned or daughters, is that it also allows people. I think it gives people permission to be more curious. I think when we can come to these processes with more of an open heart, open mind, real curiosity and respect for what we know and don’t know who we are and who like, the space between who we are and who we want to be, and the space for somebody else between who they are and they want to be. The all of that, I think, allows for so much more compassion and perspective and really makes room for growth. Ironically, I think sometimes we think punishment is the way, because, like, once you get punished, then you then you change. But I think punishment breeds more shame and and doesn’t allow for that space for people to lean into, to grow and change.

 

Ana Zamora  30:51

Absolutely, also punishment for the sake of punishment, which I would argue is what our what our prisons, especially, do now. It lacks creativity, right? And the process of human transformation and healing and rehabilitation needs creativity. It needs a boost of innovation. And just saying, punishment is the only tool in our toolbox is just lacks creativity, and it sure isn’t producing the outcomes we want at all.

 

Kerry Washington  31:21

So interesting, because when I was at San Quentin, which was so I went for the San Quentin Film Festival, is my first time visiting a prison, and there was like systemic joy, opportunities for joy built into the programming and the culture, whether it was the baseball game or the photography lessons and the guys, the journalists on site like and I could feel that access to those opportunities, to feel like You matter and you’re contributing something worthwhile and valuable, that those were really brilliant moments of planting seeds in people’s lives to give them reason to re enter with resilience and determination to not return. It wasn’t like, oh, prison is so much fun. They’re just going to stay in here forever or keep committing crimes to come back. It was like, oh, these folks are creating reasons for why their lives matter and why when they leave they want to stay out. That’s right. It was really powerful to witness.

 

Ana Zamora  32:40

It’s a testament. I mean, San Quentin is a very special place, and it’s weird to say that a prison is a special place, but it truly is, because it’s a getting towards a model of rehabilitation and accountability that that teaches us when you give folks who are incarcerated the opportunity to explore their humanity, to understand, again, the harm that they may have caused, and to grow from that, that that is when we get the public safety outcomes that we want as a public and we get an enhanced sense of dignity and humanity, which is so important to our culture.

 

Kerry Washington  33:17

Yes.

 

Ana Zamora  33:18

Okay, well, I have two more questions for you, and then, and then I’ll let you go. This has been so much fun, by the way.

 

Kerry Washington  33:25

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

 

Ana Zamora  33:27

Oh my gosh. So if you could bust one myth right now about the criminal justice system to folks who may not know as much as you and I, what would it be?

 

Kerry Washington  33:40

I think it would be what you just talked about, but really explicitly, I would say that this myth that more incarceration reduces crime or improves public safety, that that is not true, I think is so counter intuitive to so many people. Oh, yeah, that that would be if I was only allowed one, I think that would be it. Because I think that one myth is what keeps us trapped in the friction or the resistance to changing these systems.

 

Ana Zamora  34:14

Absolutely. Well said, I feel like we need Kerry Washington’s myths, top 10 myths of the criminal justice system, maybe, maybe next time. Okay, so final question, since you are such a storyteller, what stories you know looking ahead, what stories in the criminal justice space do you feel like still need to be told?

 

Kerry Washington  34:35

I think one of the things that really stayed with me after my time at San Quentin was that it really is true this thing that we say at Simpson Street, that every one of us is the hero of our own journey, that every conversation that I had with every single inmate was its own film. Every single one of them is on this. Hero’s journey of figuring out how to face their biggest dragons slay them and return to society better off than when they went in. And so I really think just more of these stories and more of these opportunities to allow people to know that this one chapter of their life is not the whole story.

 

Ana Zamora  35:34

Yeah, that’s right. Well, let’s do it, Kerry, thank you so much, this was.

 

Kerry Washington  35:41

Thank you.

 

Ana Zamora  35:42

Wonderful conversation and fun. And it’s just an honor to be able to chat with you and thank you for everything you do, all the stories you tell, all your work on and off screen helps us in the criminal justice reform space do our work all the better. So I really appreciate you and everything you’ve contributed to this important generational issue.

 

Kerry Washington  36:04

Thank you. Please, if you come across those stories and you think I should be telling them, float them my way.

 

Ana Zamora  36:11

Absolutely you can count on us absolutely, thank you.

 

Kerry Washington  36:15

Thank you.

 

CREDITS  36:23

Thanks for listening to When It Clicked. Be sure to check out Unprisoned on Hulu and stream daughters on Netflix. When It Clicked is a production of Lemonada Media and the Just Trust. I’m your host, Ana Zamora, Hannah Boomershine is our producer. Muna Danish is our senior producer. Ivan Kuraev is our audio engineer, with additional engineering support from Johnny Vince Evans. Music is from APM. Jackie Danziger is our VP of partnerships and production. Executive Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs.  Follow When It Clicked wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.