I like Kerry Washington. A lot. But I’m starting to worry about her magazine editorials. While it was nice to see her on the cover of Vanity Fair (mostly because Praise Jesus, she’s not another VF Dead Celebrity Cover), I’m starting to worry that Kerry says “yes” to bizarre editorial concepts. She’s a very pretty woman, but in magazines… the styling can be very funky. It’s like the problem Christina Hendricks runs into – magazines don’t know how to style Kerry correctly yet. Maybe because they don’t know how to style a petite African-American woman? Perhaps.

Anyway, Kerry covers the new issues of Glamour and Flare. I thought the Glamour photos were bad until I saw the Flare editorial. YIKES. As for the interviews, Kerry sounds nice. She’s a Good Girl. And I mean that in the best possible way – she’s educated, smart, compassionate, articulate and… slightly boring. Some highlights from both interviews:

On her secret marriage to Nnamdi Asomugha: “I’m walking around in the world with my ring. And when people say congratulations, I say thank you. But I’m going to continue to not talk about it and just let it unfold. I don’t want to sound smug about it… but the point is to do what’s best for me. I have girlfriends in this business who talk about their personal lives, and it works for them, and I love it. But not for me.”

On what is in Olivia Pope’s handbag: “Usually folders, pens, the phone on the show, and often a bottle of water to add a nice weight to the bag. And some panties in one episode!”

On keeping her personal life private: “I learned through experience that it doesn’t work for me to talk about my personal life. I’ve had earlier times in my career when I did talk about it. I was on the cover of a bridal magazine. But I couldn’t just turn around and say, ‘I only want to talk about the good stuff, but not the bad stuff.’ So I just thought, ‘OK, no more.’”

She studies before her appearances on Real Time with Bill Maher: “I am cramming in the green room like it’s a presidential debate. It drives me crazy when artists go on shows like that and don’t sound informed. It gives us a bad name.”

She loves Olivia Pope: “When people come up to me and express their love for [Olivia], I understand it, because I read the scripts and I feel the same way: Wow, what a complicated, three-dimensional, interesting, flawed, inspirational human being.”

Discipline for her schedule: “You have to think about eating right and sleeping right and taking care of your physical machine because the demands are so intense.”

She went to Spence in NYC: “It changed the landscape of possibility for me, and not just socioeconomically, but in all kinds of ways… The people spoke differently and dressed differently and ate differently and walked differently and smelled different; everything was different. It really started in me this curiosity [about] how people express identity through culture.”

[From Flare and RCFA]

She even joked at one point that she nearly stopped drinking after college because it was messing up her perfectionism. Also, I didn’t know she went to Spence! That’s where Gwyneth Paltrow and Maya Rudolph went to school. That’s where so many of the rich New York girls go. Does Kerry have Goop tendencies? We’ll see, but I don’t think so. I don’t think Kerry really “deigns” to talk down to peasants. Kerry is just Kerry – The Good Girl.

Photos courtesy of Flare and Glamour.