Kerry Washington Pays Tribute to Whitney Houston, Diahann Carroll at ABFF Honors
variety.comAngelique Jackson When Kerry Washington stepped onto the gold and black carpet at the 1 Hotel in West Hollywood for the fifth ABFF Honors ceremony on March 5, she had the trailblazing Black women who forged a path for her to become an actor, producer and director on her mind — and an homage to one on her person. “I’m wearing an actual dress that Whitney Houston wore,” Washington told Variety, explaining that “When you get an award for excellence in the arts, you’ve gotta go to Black excellence.” As Washington prepared for the event, where she was honored alongside Courtney B.
Vance, Janelle Monáe and Macro’s Charles D. King, plus filmmaker Kasi Lemmons and the cast of “Eve’s Bayou,” all for their contributions to the arts, one word came to mind: community. “I was thinking tonight about how lucky we are to be in community at a show like ABFF.
We really get to have each other’s backs,” she shared. “Some of us — those who tred the path for Janelle and me — they were the first, and they were the breakthroughs, and often they were the only, so it’s important that we think of them and honor them.” Washington was the first to the the stage during the ceremony, accepting her trophy from former U.S.
ambassador and her producing partner on the upcoming Netflix film “Six Triple Eight.” “’Excellence,’ according to the Oxford Dictionary, is the quality of being outstanding or extremely good,” she began. “I realized that one of the reasons this honor means so much to me is that in my quest for excellence, I have not always gravitated toward playing characters that society would label as ‘extremely good.’”A post shared by ABFF (#BlackOwned) (@americanblackfilmfestival) She continued: “I’m most often drawn to projects and to
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