There’s never a dull moment on ABC’s “Scandal,” the Shonda Rhimes political melodrama and social media juggernaut that delivers shocks the way other sitcoms deliver punch lines. The latest shocker, seen last week, was that Olivia Pope’s (Kerry Washington) mother, Maya, did not die in that plane that was shot down by President Fitzgerald Grant when he was in the Navy. Before he was the leader of the free world.
In fact, she’s very much alive and has been held prisoner for 22 years by her husband, Rowan (Joe Morton). ABC followed the revelation with a snappy hashtag — #mamapopelives — that flashed across the screen, immediately sending the show’s fans into Twitter fibrillations.
The coolest thing about the reveal, though, was that Mama Pope was played by veteran actress Khandi Alexander, who has been on every conceivable kind of television show and played everything from a crack mother (“The Corner”) and medical examiner (“CSI: Miami”) to the wise older sister (“ER”) and a bar owner (“Treme”).
Seemingly never out of work for more than 15 minutes, Alexander, 56, was contacted by “Scandal” executive producer Mark Wilding in September. “He said, ‘You can’t tell anybody, but you’re gonna be Mama Pope. Yes or no?’ ” Before Wilding hung up and called the next actress on the list, Alexander said OK.
A fan of the show, Alexander knew the drill about secrecy at Shondaland, the name of Rhimes’ production company. If you get bad news, you shut up. Even when you have good news, you keep quiet. “I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t call my manager, my agent. I didn’t say anything,” she says. “So everyone was kind of surprised.”
Video spoilers about Mama Pope’s desire to be reunited with her daughter before her husband attempts to fly her out of the country are leaking out into the world outside Shondaland and Alexander, as if reading from cue cards, recites the character’s “talking points.”
1.“The plot will thicken.” Thanks, Khandi,
2. “We will learn about Maya’s past.” Wow. Really?
3. “We’ll get more pieces to the Remington puzzle and see how Olivia reacts to the unfolding info.” You don’t say?
View videoAlexander has already filmed several episodes of “Scandal” and will be back for several more after the show returns from hiatus. In between, she is doing a play called “The Wedding Band” in Boston and remodeling a West Hollywood home she bought when she finished filming “Treme.”
“It has black slate floors, black tiles. I think somebody from the ’70s lived there,” she says.
Alexander lived in New Orleans while filming “Treme” and felt that she needed a “personal life” when the show ended. She moved back to LA, hired a new team of representatives and reconnected with her main man, businessman Craig Merrick.
“I was working all the time. I had to take a minute,” she says. “And I didn’t live anywhere. I was back to being a gypsy.”
When she got the “Scandal” job, she got a call from Lyn Paolo, the show’s costume designer. After seeing Washington’s dreamy wardrobe, Alexander was licking her lips. “She said, ‘What size do you want your jumpsuit to be?’ I was like. ‘Wait. I’m not going to Chanel? What?’ I was prepared to be Miss [Diana] Ross.”