Former "Scandal" star Kerry Washington wants to hear from you!
No, really! It's all true ... and it's also not what you might think. Wearing glasses and a beautiful, thick braid (quite a change from her summer bob!) Washington tweeted out her phone number Thursday morning along with a video in which she laments not being in regular contact with her fans anymore.
"Hi, you guys, so you know how private I am but I am going to do something crazy," says the actress, whose adaptation of the Broadway play "American Son" is coming to Netflix this fall. "I am going to give you my phone number, which I know sounds insane. You know, I posted about this last week. I've been missing that TGIT love. We used to come together every Thursday night at the same time and the same place."
As she notes, she had indeed tweeted about missing the "Scandal" fans in an Aug. 22 post.
"Some Thursdays it hurts more than others!" she wrote in that tweet.
In her Thursday video, she continues, "I would know where you were and you would know where I was and we would talk about stuff that really mattered to us and kind of be in a community together and I want to bring some of that back because I miss you guys."
She notes that social media is "amazing," but finds it hard to "sift through and really connect with the people who matter to you most."
And that's where her fans come in. "So, I'm giving you my number. It's 718-400-7118 — shoutout to the boogie-down Bronx — and I really want you to text me," she says. "I want you to ask me questions, I'm going to send links like special sneak peeks."
Naturally, fans sniffed out pretty fast it was a marketing stunt to build a mailing list.
But that didn't stop them from cheering their favorite actress (while also signing up).
Now if you don't want to experiment yourself, here's how it all works. If you decide not to text and you call the number, you'll get Washington's chipper voice telling you that she doesn't check voicemails. Instead ... all together now ... text her! Then you can really start communicating.
"And we'll all feel seen and loved," she says on the message.
So what happens if you text? You're treated to a link and an auto-response that reads, "(H)ey it's Kerry! Real quick — click this link & sign up so I can add you to my contacts and respond to you directly. Can't wait to hear from you!"
The link takes you to a mobile-access-only form at Community.com where you're asked to provide your name, birthday, city, gender identity and email, though that last bit is optional. Once you've signed up, you're one of Kerry's "contacts" and we bet you'll be hearing from her pretty soon.
"You guys are going to be the people I am closest to in terms of trading information, so text me," Washington wraps up in the video. "Really, really text me."