Kerry Washington For Flare October 2013

‘Scandal’ star Kerry Washington graces her second October issue, this time for Canada’s Flare Magazine.

She looks beautiful wearing a pink polka-dot coat and yellow polka-dot scarf from Miu Miu’s Fall collection with sexy stockings and white Christian Louboutin pumps on the cover shot by Ruven Afanador.

The photographer also captures Kerry wearing Jason Wu, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Maison Martin Margiela and Dior, while talk turns to fashion, childhood ambition, the love of acting, and why fans of ‘Scandal’ find themselves uncomfortable rooting for the mistress.

Here are some extracts from her interview. You can read more over at Flare.com.

On rooting for the mistress: “A lot of people have had an affair. Most people haven’t had an affair with the president of the United States. But they can relate to it… I had girlfriends calling me from week three [of Scandal] going, ‘I’m really uncomfortable. Why am I rooting for the mistress? I’m a married woman!’ And I would say, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK.’?… There are some ways you want to be Olivia Pope and some ways you want to do a major intervention for her.”

On her love of fashion: “The red carpet is good marketing. When you work so hard, you should stand behind the project in a way that magnetizes people. So I, like a good, only-child student, studied fashion and decided I was going to play that game, and fell in love with it, and with the artists and designers.”

On childhood ambitions: “I didn’t think I would do this for a living—because I didn’t know anybody who did. I come from an academic family, so I figured I would have a real job.”

On Olivia’s bad behaviour in season two: “I was like, [wailing] ‘I just don’t know how we’re gonna do this!’ ?I had just gotten back from the Democratic National Convention, where I’d done this speech about the importance of voter inclusivity and democracy and ‘We the People,’ and I come back and my character is spitting in the face of all of that.”

On the challenge of being an only child: “You feel like the pressure’s on you to live up to all of the dreams and expectations, because you’re it.”

On why she loves acting: “I love those moments that are few and far between, where you’re so deeply, deeply invested in an imaginary world that you truly forget yourself for a little while, and the only reality that exists is the reality of that scene. That’s like drugs to me,” she says. “And it is hard to find that high, but that’s what you work for.”