Kerry Washington and Pilar Savone Say the Secret to Simpson Street Is Making Projects That Are ‘Undeniable’

Kerry Washington and Pilar Savone are giants of their respective fields. Washington an A-list actress whose 24-year résumé comes with a Primetime Emmy Award and five NAACP Image Awards, while Savone is a Best Picture Academy Award-nominated producer who was trained up with Quentin Tarantino.

As destiny would have it, that’s where their worlds collided: on the set of the filmmaker’s highest-grossing film to date, “Django Unchained.” There, Washington and Savone connected through their love of storytelling.

“We had the same sensibility and kind of wanted to tell the same kind of stories,” Savone told TheWrap in a joint Zoom call with Washington.

“We knew we had the desire to work together in some capacity at some point down the road,” Washington added. “It was really exciting when the opportunity arose, when I was like, ‘I need somebody to help me steer this ship and be my partner.'”

That moment came in 2016, when Washington launched Simpson Street, a multi-service production house that would later produce hit series like “Little Fires Everywhere” and “UnPrisoned” (which just wrapped Season 2 last month), while also working as a venture capitalist firm and social impact initiative.

The success of Simpson Street, which was named after the street Washington’s mother grew up on in the Bronx, can be credited to its understanding of Hollywood’s fleeting market and knowing how to package a project that studios simply can’t deny.

“Having lived through the pandemic and having lived through two strikes, the studios are more more risk-averse and they’ve tightened their belts a lot,” Washington explained. “They definitely don’t want to spend on something that they don’t feel is undeniable. That’s the part of when we love something, we try to think about how we can make it undeniable.”

In a conversation with TheWrap, Washington and Savone opened up about courting one another as potential business partners, how Simpson Street’s debut film “Confirmation” was the catalyst for the production company’s creation and how Simpson Street is combating a downtown in production by “strategically packaging” diverse stories that every human can relate to.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Simpson Street serves many purposes. It’s a production company, a venture capitalist firm, voter rights impact group and more. Did you always anticipate building such a multifaceted company?
Kerry Washington: I’m just a very curious person, and I have a lot of different interests. I think along the way, I started discovering that there was a through line where there was consistency in the voting rights work that I do and the narrative producing work that I do. What they have in common is that I believe in the value of everyone’s journey. I believe that everybody’s voice matters, that everybody’s vote matters, that everybody’s story matters. So I started to notice that there were these common themes around democracy, inclusion, human value, integrity, truth and courage. And so it was like, “I think all of this can be housed under the Simpson Street name.”

Pilar Savone: I also think with our projects, it’s not always our intention to have that impact. “UnPrisoned,” for example: What we loved about that was that it was a father-daughter story from the core. Then learning about Tracy [McMillan’s] story with her dad, who was previously incarcerated, and unpacking what that means to the community and to families — it ties into the impact side. It tends to happen kind of organically in a lot of our projects. And we have a great team that helps us figure out how to navigate that and help in the impact areas.

From the outside looking in, some might think pitching a project with an A-lister like Kerry would be relatively easy. What misconceptions about the pitching and selling process have you experienced?
K.W.: The biggest misconception is that you walk in with a pitch and just because you have talent attached, that it’s going to sell immediately. That is just not the landscape that we’re in right now. It’s never been in the landscape, to be honest. But now we’re in a very challenging period, so we feel really lucky to be having the summer that Simpson Street is having, where we have two shows (“UnPrisoned” and “Reasonable Doubt”) in our second season, a documentary on Netflix, another special airing on Disney+ — we feel really, really lucky because the market is tough.

I think that’s probably the greatest misconception. We see that with me, but we also see that when attaching other talent. It’s so heartbreaking when I talk a good friend into getting on board and developing something with us, and then we take it out and we can’t get it made. And people say, “We love this. We love this. This is this is quality. It’s beautiful. It’s beautifully, but we just don’t know how it sells.” Or, “We just don’t know how to find an audience.” Or, “We just don’t have the budget for it.”

What types of stories stand out to you both that you want to tell?
K.W.: We want to make things that we would want to watch. That is a big, important factor, and that’s not as easy as it sounds, because we also have different sensibilities at times, but we want to make things that the team is passionate about.

P.S.: We really ask ourselves, “What do we want to put out into the world? What are we going to be proud of?” Proud to have our name on, proud to be promoting who our partners [are]. I think the sad truth right now is, “What can we get made in this landscape?” I think there’s a lot of projects that we actually do love and we feel really passionate about, but it feels challenging at the moment. I think pre-strike, we were more willing to give it a go and try and do that. I think that landscape has shifted so much that it’s just a lot harder at the moment. So we have to think differently. Like, “OK, we absolutely love this project. We love this writer. How can we make it undeniable?” I do think how we can put something out in the marketplace, if we can sell it, is a big part of the decision-making process right now.

K.W.: Simpson Street sits at the intersection of two things. What makes us completely unique as individuals — we’re looking for stories that are untold, stories about marginalized people, stories we’ve never heard before that open up our landscape. Then also sitting at the intersection of what makes us completely unique is also what makes us all the same. We know that for stories to really work, they have to tap into that shared humanity where everybody understands. So they may not understand the packaging, but they understand the gift inside: Everybody wants to be loved, everybody wants to belong, everybody wants to succeed. Those actual universal human desires of being safe, being loved, being secure, those are the kind of things that drive us to find those stories that allow for connectivity, but in unique packages, cultures and characters. I think that those are kind of the two through lines that carry us.

How do you make a project undeniable in the eyes of studios?
K.W.: For us, a big part of that is partnership, really aligning ourselves with the right partners, whether it’s acting, talent, writers, directors, other production companies — just like, making sure that we are coming in arms linked and strong with a package, which used to be the agency’s job to package. But it feels like if you want to really succeed, we have to be thinking strategically about packaging as a production company.

Have you all had mentors? Who is in your village, and how have they helped during your career?

P.S.: I grew up on sets. I started as an AD, and I grew up in that Quentin world. I grew up around a lot of men, and men that were actually really great to me and that I learned a lot from. I remember looking at [film producer] Lawrence Bender and saying, “I want to do what he does.” I think [producer] Stacey Cher has been a mentor in many ways in my career, and I’m so proud of her. I love working with her. We have a couple things that we’re trying to do with her. I think she’s probably the closest to a mentor to me, and also just one of my dearest friends.

K.W.: I think I’ve had mentors more as an actor than as a producer. I always think about my baby shower, because I had my three kind of godmother actresses, of these three women who have been like lighthouses for me. They were and are actresses, but they worked across all mediums. And they produced and they developed and never stopped working, but doing the things they wanted to do and love to do. So that’s Jane Fonda and Cicely Tyson and Diane Carroll. I am still close to Jane, and unfortunately have lost the other two. They’ve also all been very involved in civil rights and human justice as part of their journey as artists.

And then I think I have been part of a sisterhood of actresses that we kind of, I wouldn’t say, mentor each other, but we rise together. We were always kind of offering each other wisdom, because we’re traveling in a similar dance. Those are people Eva Longoria. Eva just directed her first feature last year. So beautiful, but she always says she didn’t have the courage to direct until I asked her to come be in a PSA that I was directing. I’m like, “Well, I’m not directing a feature, right?” We just help each other along the way. Reese [Witherspoon] is obviously somebody who is like a sister, mentor, friend. Tracee Ellis Ross, Rashida Jones, Lena Waithe, Issa Rae — those are all people who we kind of travel this road together and offer wisdom to each other.

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