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Scandal actress Kerry Washington is looking stunning in black as she poses in a film noir style shoot for Uptown magazine’s Dec/Jan issue. Inside, she dishes on the controversy around her new film Django Unchained being a slavery flick, as well as her multiethnic family and the range of roles she chooses to play. She also reveals that she’s wanted to quit the entertainment industry for good plenty of times.

Peep the excerpts:

On what drew her to Django and the controversy around the movie:

“I’ve never seen slavery dealt with this way before in film. So often it’s a white character who’s the savior of black people.” “We should have a plethora of visions and interpretations of who we are as a nation.” But she admits, “This is not necessarily the film I would make about slavery.”

On growing up in the Washington household and her multi-cultural family:

She still remembers the lively, sometimes heated, discussions on race and society around the dinner table. “My family’s very multiethnic,” she says. “When we get together for the holidays, it is the U.N., across the board.”

On the culture shock when she enrolled in an upper east side private school:

Prior to Spence, Washington thought her working-middle-class family was balling. “We had a microwave and two cars. We had a dishwasher before anyone in the building,” she says. “And then you go to this other world, and it’s, ‘Oh, we’re taking a helicopter to your house in the Hamptons?’ For a lot of classmates, I knew the only other black women they’d known were their domestic help.”

On leaving the entertainment business:

“Sometimes I feel like I can’t do this anymore.” Almost once a year, her hair and makeup folks hear it: “I am done! I’m so done.”

On why she’s no saint:

“If you look at my body of work, I’ve always taken huge risks. I’ve played prostitutes, drug addicts, pimping lesbians. I do work I’m drawn to.”