2018 TCA Set Visit

“I will say two things. I think [it’s] very true that Shonda and Linda have really allowed for characters to have a lot of different races and ages and ethnicities. But I've been thinking about it a lot after Sterling K. Brown’s speech at the Golden Globes — at the same time, Shonda was very specific from the beginning that Olivia Pope would be black because she was inspired by a real African American woman and she felt that her racial identity had real ramifications on the construction of her soul and she wanted those things to be connected. And I think the fact that in my lifetime there had not been a black woman at the lead of a television show and now everywhere you look, every single network has women of color helming shows. I think that will be part of the legacy of the show.” 

“The three of our characters [referring to Quinn Perkins, Olivia Pope and Mellie Grant] have all risen to be women in power in their respective careers. And I think that will hopefully be one of the many things [the show] is remembered for in 20 years, that a lot of the story telling is surrounded and features very, very strong women in powerful positions.”  

“Everybody has a seat at the table… I just think that Shonda — without being dogmatic about it — writes her heart and I never see a script that says, ‘Berta, 30s, white.’ You see that in so many other places, Shonda, it's not even a factor. She's writing soul, she's writing stories… So I love to think that we've gotten to be a part of a legacy of inclusion. I certainly have seen the change it’s made on television. I'm just so grateful, so humble, so happy to be a part of that.” 

“I hope that [people] talk about the kind of stories we told — maybe not the stories we told, but the way we told them, the rate at which stories were burned through, especially in this landscape of television these days where you have all these streaming services. You have so many different platforms and ‘Scandal’ was able to navigate that successfully.” 

“The intersection of technology and TV will also be part of the legacy, because I think our live-tweeting the show was part of the life's blood of our early success, and I think we'll get an asterisk in the record book for being one of the first to do it.”