How One Unexpected Workout Transformed Kerry Washington’s Journey to Healing and Self-Forgiveness—You Won’t Believe What She Revealed!
Ever wonder how an acclaimed actress like Kerry Washington gets from script to screen so seamlessly? Sure, makeup artists and costume designers play their part, but have you thought about the power of Pilates as a secret weapon in character development? For Kerry, it’s not just about fitness or looking good—it’s a full-on mind-body connection that helps her become the character, and more importantly, come home to herself. Pilates instructor Erika Bloom doesn’t just keep her physically sharp; she’s a creative collaborator in how Kerry moves, breathes, and feels her roles. But this journey goes way beyond the reel—Pilates has been a lifeline through Kerry’s personal battles, a path to empowerment, and a foundation for her career and business ambitions. Curious how movement, mental health, and resilience intertwine in her story? Let’s dive in and unpack what makes this blend so transformative. LEARN MORE
9 min readIt’s no secret that actors rely on an array of behind-the-scenes professionals—makeup artists, costume designers, dialect coaches, voice teachers—to help them get into character. For Hollywood star Kerry Washington, that list includes another, far more unorthodox, advisor: her longtime pilates instructor Erika Bloom.
“The way that I develop character is often through the body,” the 49-year-old tells me right after her Women’s Health photo shoot, snuggled into a comfy pair of sweats, her braids pulled back into a high bun. “I like to think about how a character walks, how they stand, what their own movement practices are. I’ve had times where Erika will read a script to help me think through the movement of the character.”
Balenciaga top and pants, Melinda Maria earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
A devotee of pilates for the past two decades, Kerry doesn’t see the method as a fitness fad or TikTok trend. It’s a vital part of her life, both on- and off-screen. Yes, she uses the practice to embody a character, but she also uses it to embody Kerry. When physical and mental health struggles have left her feeling at odds with her body, pilates has brought her back to herself—which is key for her at this point in her life as she expands both her business investments and her career ambitions.
“It’s not somewhere I come to judge myself and try to look different,” she says of her hours of private practice (usually three to four each week). “It’s somewhere I come to know myself better and to be more at home in my body, and that’s really empowering.”
The journey to feeling at home in her body has been a long one for the actor. Born and raised in the Bronx, Kerry is the only child of her parents, real estate broker Earl and educator Valerie. As a tween and teen, she participated in youth theater and began auditioning for commercials and film roles while attending the prestigious all-girls Spence School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. “On the outside, my childhood, my family, and our lives, were golden,” she wrote in her 2023 memoir Thicker Than Water. But that glittery facade masked a dark secret—sexual abuse when she was a child, perpetrated by a young friend.
Kerry kept the traumatic incidents to herself for years, channeling her fears and angst into acting instead. “Being somebody else was more comfortable for me than being me,” she explains in the book.
Nike top and pants, Melinda Maria earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
But no matter how deep one buries these things, they always have a way of resurfacing, and when she was in college, Kerry turned to food as a coping mechanism—a way to detach from her body. She’d atone for her periods of binge eating by overexercising or simply not eating at all, resulting in a toxic cycle that left her feeling out of control and hating her body even more.
At 19, she began therapy, in which she learned to express her emotions as Kerry, rather than a character. And therapy has been an important part of her mental health regimen ever since.
“It’s really meaningful, significant, and helpful to have a time in the week where I reflect and take accountability for what’s going on in my mind and in my life,” Kerry says. “I learn better tools to emotionally regulate and be responsive, not reactive—to show up in life as the person that I want to be.”
After graduating from George Washington University, Kerry continued to heal that rift between mind and body through yoga, which she had begun at Spence. She loved the practice so much that she got certified to teach while on an acting study program in India, and she kept it as a side hustle while auditioning. Yoga ultimately served as a bridge to pilates. The origin story details are a little fuzzy, but Kerry recalls hearing about pilates as an adjacent mind-body modality and deciding to give it a try. She was hooked.
Today, she still practices yoga, but pilates has taken over top billing, because it helps her understand her body in a deeper way and prevents injury. Some of Kerry’s favorite pilates moves are those from the side-lying series, such as leg presses, in which she lies on the reformer and uses a single leg to
push the carriage out and in. “I am a leg girlie,” she says.
That lower-body focus extends to her strength-training routine too. As she’s gotten older, Kerry has started to lift heavier for overall longevity and bone health (osteoporosis runs in her family) during twice-weekly sessions with trainer Matt Seki—something she says she probably wouldn’t be able to do if not for pilates.
“It helps me do everything else that I do for fitness without getting hurt,” she says. “I’m able to approach movement with so much more intelligence and physical awareness and proper alignment because of pilates. I feel like I can take more risks with the rest of my fitness, whether it’s rock climbing, or running, or swimming in open water. I can do so much more.”
Alo top and shorts, Melinda Maria earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
Like so many who wrestle with eating disorders, Kerry knows that recovery isn’t one singular moment in time but rather a continual process, so her approach to eating is mindful yet flexible.
“My biggest trigger is when I shame myself about a food decision,” she says. “The moment that I deem a food choice ‘not okay’ and start to beat myself up about it, I’m so tempted to leave my body again that it leads to more disordered eating. Which is weird because it’s the very thing that I am upset about. I have found that forgiveness and grace are two giant tools for recovery.”
Bodywork has also been a source of healing for Kerry, not just through pilates but also via practices like lymphatic massage and facials.
“It’s one of the ways that I, quite honestly, love myself and make amends for some years of not being kind to myself,” she says.
Advocacy and action are additional means for Kerry to address her past—and to help others who might be struggling. In late 2025, driven by her own experiences with disordered eating, Kerry signed on as an investor and advisor in the eating disorder treatment start-up Equip, an evidence-based virtual practice that weaves treatment into patients’ everyday lives.
Alo top and pants, Melinda Maria earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
“When I heard about Equip, I thought, Wow, this is a way of democratizing healing for people who are struggling with disordered eating, ” Kerry says. “The way that the disorder manifests is so multifaceted, and so the treatment needs to be too.… It’s more focused on the physical, mental, emotional, and the community around you.”
Equip is one of several investments Kerry has made over the years in women’s health care, with an eye toward issues near and dear to her. Another is Winx Health, a sexual and reproductive health company. “I feel like women’s sexual health is so often swept under the rug,” Kerry says. “I love that Winx is so committed to putting our health and wellness front and center and not acting like this is a shameful product line.” (Fun fact: As a teen, Kerry performed in a theater company educating young people about safe sex.)
“For me, a lot of the companies that I partner with are about figuring out how to bring something that I’ve had access to because I’ve been lucky, or privileged, or blessed in some way,” Kerry says.
“[I want to help] figure out how to make it so that I’m not the exception, but I can share some of these tools with a wider community that I think is in need and deserving.”
The themes of privilege and community also play a big role in Kerry’s next project, the political crime thriller Animals (streaming on Netflix October 9), in which she portrays a therapist and the wife of Ben Affleck’s Los Angeles mayoral candidate, whose son is kidnapped and held for ransom. And yes, she definitely took inspiration from therapists of yore when crafting her character, Abigail.
“It was fun to sit in that chair,” Kerry says. “I have found that therapists often—even though they seem to have all the answers—have very complicated lives themselves. It’s that idea of ‘Physician, heal thyself.’ ”
Vuori Sweater, Swedish Stockings Leg Warmers (stylist’s own), Fiametta earrings, all other pieces Kerry’s own jewelry.
Animals marks something of a departure for Kerry, whose preference in recent years has been to take on only the projects in which she also serves as a producer, to ensure that she has agency. But she says the prospect of working with Affleck, who also produces and directs the film, ultimately persuaded her to sign on.
“If I’m going to join a project where I’m not a producer, which is very rare now, I have to have so much faith and trust in the people who are steering the ship,” she says. “This was one of those situations where I knew that I would be seen and heard and that my opinion would be valued and taken into account.”
Despite the many projects she’s appeared in over the past decade, from portraying Anita Hill in the HBO film Confirmation to starring as a driven career woman in the Apple TV series Imperfect Women, it’s still her iconic role as Washington, D.C., fixer Olivia Pope in Scandal that fans gush about the most when they speak to her—with one caveat.
“Often, people will very quickly offer a second thing, almost to say, ‘I’m a real fan,’ ” Kerry says, grinning. “They’ll say, ‘I love Scandal, but also your first movie, Our Song.’ Or, ‘I love Scandal, but I’ve seen everything you’ve done on Broadway.’ It’s sweet to see the different places where I’ve been able to intersect with people’s lives.”
The enduring appeal of Shonda Rhimes’s political intrigue isn’t hard to understand, given its whip-smart writing, high-stakes drama, and cast of gifted actors. And for Kerry, that ensemble (and their partners) have become a second family—so much so that when Kerry is trying to track down Tony Goldwyn (a.k.a. on-screen love President Fitzgerald Grant), she’ll ask her real-life husband, former NFL player and actor/producer Nnamdi Asomugha, if he knows where Goldwyn is at that moment. “They’re so close,” Kerry says. “It’s lovely.”
Alo top and shorts, Melinda Maria earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
When I ask Kerry if she would ever consider a Scandal reunion—Scandal: The Movie?!—she replies that she thinks so, if the pieces all fell into place. “I would be game if it was done the right way, and if the right people were involved, and if everybody committed,” she says.
Whether she chooses to once again don Olivia Pope’s four-inch Louboutins, take a chance on a new headlining role, or finally sit in the director’s chair for a feature-length film (one of her career goals), Kerry’s approach is to have an open mind and a full heart.
“I want to continue to be brave about my choices and challenge myself,” she says. “The artists that I look up to the most are the people who kept reinventing themselves and challenging themselves—the multi-hyphenates like Barbra Streisand, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson, Rita Moreno, and Jane Fonda. Those are my lighthouses.”
In order to shine like her idols and be present for her family and friends and the industry folks she’s trying to bring up with her, she knows that she has to be at the top of her game, both physically and mentally.
Vuori top and shorts, Fiametta earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
“I need to be strong. I need to be alert. I need to be embodied,” she says. “I need to be not focused on shaming myself and in a spiral of what else I should be or do. But I need to be in a place of loving myself and knowing that I have things to contribute, so that I can contribute them and not be that 19-year-old girl hiding under the covers because I ate those three boxes of pizza and two pints of ice cream, and I want to kill myself because I don’t feel like I deserve better.”
Through therapy, advocacy, investment, and, yes, pilates, Kerry has managed to craft a routine that helps her find her way back to her body and herself, whenever she needs it: “I get to get out of the shame, get out of the bed, and be in a life that is beyond my wildest dreams because of the healing work that I have done and continue to do.”
Vuori top and shorts, Fiametta earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
Nike top and pants, Melinda Maria earrings, Kerry’s own jewelry.
Executive Editor: Abigail Cuffey
Photographs: Dana Scruggs
Styling: Rob Zangardi + Mariel Hanne,
Styling Assisting: Lee Hayman
Hair: Nai’Vasha Grace using Curl Queen + Oribe
Makeup: Keita Moore at The Only Agency using Nars
Nails: Pattie Yankee at Opus Beauty using Essie
Set Design: Natalia and Odin
Pilates Instruction: Erika Bloom
Deputy Visual Director: Muzam Agha
Creative Director: Jamie Prokell
Video Executive Producer: Dorenna Newton
Video Producer: Janie Booth
Video DP: Alvah Holmes
Video Editor: Josh Archer
Amy Wilkinson is a contributing entertainment editor at Women’s Health, where she edits the magazine’s celebrity cover stories and writes health features. She has previously held editor titles at Entertainment Weekly and MTV News. In 2021, Amy completed her 600-hour teacher-training at Core Pilates NYC to become a comprehensively trained Pilates instructor.
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