PEOPLE All Seven Seasons of Scandal: So Long to the Intrigue, Lust, Plot Twists, Popcorn & Olivia Pope

By The Editors of PEOPLE

Popcorn and red wine will never be the same again

After seven seasons of intrigue, lust and plot twists, Olivia Pope and her team of Gladiators are taking their final bow. In this new Special Edition from People, go behind the scenes of the hit show that helped redefine "must-see TV." From its very first episode, Scandal featured plots ripped from the headlines and the real-life White House, following a powerful D.C. fixer who was able to take every crisis in hand, while handling a . . . complicated affair with the President. We cover each and every season, the breakout moments, the shocking deaths and more, and pair it with outstanding photography. We track Olivia's style, provide profiles on all major cast members, and offer 16 new interviews with cast and crew, including Scandal creator Shonda Rhimes, Kerry Washington and Tony Goldwyn. Whether you've been a long-time Gladiator or are binge-watching now, PEOPLE Scandal is the perfect companion (as well as wine and popcorn)!

• Language: English
• Publisher: People
• Release date: Feb 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781547842179

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Scandal stars Bellamy Young (Mellie Grant), Darby Stanchfield (Abby Whelan), Jeff Perry (Cyrus Beene), Tony Goldwyn (Fitzgerald Grant), Kerry Washington (Olivia Pope), Scott Foley (Jake Ballard), Joshua Malina (David Rosen), Guillermo Diaz (Huck) and Katie Lowes (Quinn Perkins).

Kerry Washington

We were a tiny little midseason replacement. We needed a grassroots movement to survive. We know we owe our success to our fans

—Kerry Washington

Life changed for Kerry Washington on April 5, 2012. That was the premiere of ABC’s Scandal, the hit series that would bring Washington fame, a steady paycheck and, as the actor playing Olivia Pope, a place in the popular culture from which memes were launched and fashion trends were born. It was also the first time in 37 years that a network drama series had featured an African-American woman in the lead role, a fact that is equally important to Washington, who was born three years after the debut (also on ABC) of Get Christie Love!, starring Theresa Graves as an undercover police detective, which lasted 23 episodes before going off the air in 1975. In my lifetime I had not seen it and neither had any of my peers, says Washington, who grew up in the Bronx and attended George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

With the starring role on Scandal, Washington was living it. We did it—put a black actress in the lead role—and we did it very easily, says the series’ creator, Shonda Rhimes. We made it very clear that it could be a hit. We made it clear that it could capture the zeitgeist of America and other countries around the world. And we made it clear that it was stupid that it hadn’t been happening before.

Scandal won rave reviews and a loyal fan following thanks to its provocative mix of political scheming and steamy romance, with the charismatic fixer Olivia Pope at the vortex of its addictive appeal. As a supremely skilled Beltway crisis manager, there was seemingly no problem she couldn’t solve. That is, until we discovered her secret weakness: She was having an affair with the President of the United States, Fitzgerald Fitz Grant (Tony Goldwyn).

Midway through the second season, as Fitz was struggling to survive an assassination attempt, the show’s ratings took off as the ranks of its loyal fans—the Gladiators, who styled themselves after Olivia’s pet name for her skilled and eccentric colleagues­—began to swell. Everything about the success of this show was a surprise for me, said Washington from the set of the show, where production was winding down on the final episodes. I don’t do work with the expectation that it’s going to be consumed, because it happens a lot in this business that you make something that you feel really proud of that never sees the light of day.

But this time what happened was just the opposite. As Scandal became a cultural phenomenon, Washington was suddenly a household name, racking up Emmy and Golden Globe nominations, magazine covers and millions of social media followers. "I remember Oprah telling me, ‘Well, I started watching Scandal because it’s all everybody talked about on Thursday night on Twitter,’ " she recalls.

This stratospheric level of success followed more than a decade of credits in film (Ray, The Last King of Scotland), on TV (Boston Legal, 100 Centre Street) and on Broadway (David Mamet’s Race). Until further notice, however, Olivia Pope will remain her signature role. And as that character has evolved, ricocheting between good and evil in the fluid moral landscape created by the show’s writers, so has Washington herself.

One of the things that is so interesting for me about the journey is that I feel like Olivia and I were much more similar seven years ago, she says. We were both unmarried, career-driven, ambitious, compassionate people—and women of color. That has remained the same, she adds with a laugh. But in that time I’ve gotten married and started a family. My life has taken on a different shape, and hers has too.

Fiercely protective of her privacy, Washington, 41, quietly wed Nnamdi Asomugha in a small ceremony in Hailey, Idaho, in 2013. A Los Angeles native and four years her junior, he was a captain of the University of California, Berkeley football team and played 11 seasons in the NFL. He now works as an actor, most recently starring in the 2017 film Crown Heights. The couple have two children, Isabelle, 3, and Caleb, 1.

Washington maintains another tight-knit clan on the set of the show. I’m with these people sometimes 16 hours a day, so it’s really so meaningful that we’ve all been able to become such good friends, she says. We’ve really become family to each other. My son is walking around in hand-me-downs from Scott Foley and his wife, Marika, from their boys. And I’ve given tons of clothes to Katie Lowes for her son.

The feeling of love and professional respect is mutual. She’s tremendous, says Joe Morton, who plays Olivia’s Machiavellian father, Rowan. Everything from the idea of using social media [to help promote] the show—that idea came from Kerry—to, if we do a scene in a restaurant, her applauding out loud and congratulating all the background performers who are there. She’s enormously generous and loving, and I’m not saying that because she’s my coworker and she plays my daughter. She will refuse to sit in the front seat of the van when we’re on our way to a location, he says,