Kerry Washington On Doing 'Django Unchained': 'I Nearly Lost My Mind'

Washington, who also stars as crisis manager Olivia Pope on ABC's Scandal, found herself in a crisis of her own and asked her manager and her parents to visit her at Django's Louisiana plantation set.

"I usually never let my people come visit me on set because I think it's terribly distracting," Washington said. "I don't enjoy it but I asked them to come down because I was concerned for my sanity."

Washington said during the movie shoot, she received real lashings from the actor playing her overseer.  She also had to spend time in a "hot box" to get used to scenes in which her character, the slave Broomhilda, was imprisoned in an underground metal container.

But in the end, Washington felt it was all worth it because of the opportunity the film gave her to "honor the truth" of what happened during slavery.