“She’s got the whole walk down all the way to the room,” recalled the actor during Washington’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony
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Tyler Perry, Kerry Washington at her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony on December 02, 2024 in Los Angeles, California
Tyler Perry is revealing why Kerry Washington played Scandal‘s Olivia Pope with such ease and how he saw this trait in her daughter Isabelle Amarachi.
Perry, 55, attended Washington’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony on Monday, Dec. 2, where he spoke about some of the “personal things” he’s noticed throughout his friendship with the actress, including her ability to approach her life on and off-screen with “love” and “attention.”
The actor recalled a time when he and his family went on vacation with Washington, 47, and her loved ones while she was filming Scandal and pregnant with her daughter.
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Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope on ‘Scandal’
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“So as she was walking back to the room, the baby’s walking in front of us because her diaper on,” explained Perry, referring to her 10-year-old daughter Isabelle, whom she shares with her husband, Nnamdi Asomugha.
“And I’m looking at her, and I’m like, I said, Kerry, she’s walking like Olivia Pope,” said Perry about Washington’s daughter embodying the character her mom played for seven seasons from 2012 to 2018.
Related: Kerry Washington’s 3 Kids: Everything She’s Said About Parenting
“She’s got the whole walk down all the way to the room. She embodies it. She embodies it, and I think that she passed it on to the baby,” he continued.
He ended his speech by praising Washington’s character.
“So with that said, as I think about the life that she’s lived as an activist, as a woman, as a person, as a person of color, the character that she is exhibited for everyone to see, I’m so incredibly proud of her,” said Perry.
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Kerry Washington at her Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony on December 02, 2024 in Los Angeles, California
In addition to Isabelle, Washington is a mom to 8-year-old son Caleb Kelechi and Asomugha’s teenage daughter from a previous relationship.
Washington opened up to PEOPLE in June about keeping her kids out of the spotlight, expressing that she and her husband “have been really protective of our partnership and our relationship, because we wanted it to belong to us, and we found that we were able to define and create a relationship for ourselves and with each other outside of the public eye.”
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“And I think in many ways, we just want to give our kids that same opportunity to define a life for themselves and to enter the public space in their own way,” she added.
Perry directed Washington in For Colored Girls (2010), Peeples (2013) and the upcoming Netflix movie The Six Triple Eight. The new movie will be released on the streamer on Dec. 20.