Kerry Washington is one protective mama bear. The Scandal alum, 47, recently gave her take on why she keeps her kids away from the Hollywood limelight.
She and her husband, Nnamdi Asomugha, are guarded of their kids: daughter Isabelle, 10, son Caleb, 7, and a stepdaughter Anaiya, 18. (The teenager is Asomugha’s child from a previous relationship.)
“I think just from the very beginning, Nnamdi and I 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,” Washington told People in an interview published on Sunday, June 30.
“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.
However, while Washington says she and Asomugha, 42, are “definitely not as protective as we used to be,” the couple still allows their children to pursue their passions.
The Little Fires Everywhere star then joked that the kids aren’t “locked in a dungeon.”
She noted that the three do come to her sets when she’s working from time to time.
“We do feel like we want to give them agency to engage in a public life in the way they want to, because this is what we do. We’ve chosen to be athletes and artists, and that’s our choice. But we want to let them be kids,” Washington said.
The Confirmation actress and the NFL player married in Idaho in 2013. Asomugha played for several football teams, including the Oakland Raiders, Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers. He retired in 2013 after a decade in the NFL.
Washington dished earlier this year that she kept her engagement ring hidden inside her clothes as a way to keep her relationship private.
“I used to pin my engagement ring to my undergarments because I loved my ring so much, so I would sleep in it at night, and then in the morning, I would pin it to my undergarments so that nobody knew we were engaged,” Washington divulged on SiriusXM’s This Life of Mine with James Corden.
“It just felt like there was a lot of public energy around our careers, but we kept our relationship very private when we were dating, I think mostly because we just wanted to protect ourselves and each other,” she said.
