The Weight Those Heels Carry Michael Lewis for The New York Times As a political crisis manager, Kerry Washington is the lead in the hit TV drama "Scandal." LOS ANGELES - Kerry Washington starts with the shoes. To portray Olivia Pope, the tough crisis manager at the center of the hit ABC series "Scandal," Ms. Washington is always in gravity-defying heels. How else to make that sexed-up power stalk down the White House corridors? "I never completely understand a character until I know what kind of shoes they wear," Ms. Washington said. For an interview at Milk Studios here, she was in a pair of intimidating white high heels. But Ms. Washington is often in sneakers or flip-flops, a clue for anyone trying to understand her. "It says I'm not really attracted to walking in the world in any one way," she explained. I like to walk in the world a lot of different ways. Those ways have ranged from the role of the slave Broomhilda in Quentin Tarantino's recent "Django Unchained" to the pampered Grace Peeples in the modern romantic comedy "Peeples," out on May 10. But it has been through the intimacy and reach of television that Ms. Washington, 36, has arrived in the center of a major cultural discussion. Thanks to "Scandal," she is only the second black woman in almost 40 years to lead a network television drama, and the first one to make it a bona fide hit. Ratings for the political thriller, which began last April, have been building all season; it now beats its rival at 10 p.m. on Thursday - "Elementary" on CBS - many weeks among viewers 18 to 49, the demographic advertisers covet most. Critics hail its often outrageous, fast-paced plot twists. The designer-dressed Pope, who has her own crisis-management firm, and her team of young "gladiators in suits" repair reputations and fix scandals, from kidnappings to murder. Pope is also the former mistress of President Fitzgerald Grant, or Fitz, a white married Republican played by Tony Goldwyn; their sex scenes sizzled. " "Scandal" has flair and even sophistication," the critic Alessandra Stanley wrote in The Times. In no small part that is because of Ms. Washington's ability to convey class and sensuality at the same time, in the words of Reginald Hudlin, a producer of "Django Unchained." For many devotees, the show's depiction of a complex black woman at the top of her game - her racial identity never a big deal - is the cherry on top. Paradoxically, attention to the breakout role has meant Ms. Washington must carry the racial aspirations and fantasies of more than a few fans as well as the expectation that her success could open doors in the notoriously race-averse world of network television. It's clear that "Scandal" has touched a nerve: Twitter regularly blows up with "Scandal"-related tweets when the show is on, and the flood of cyberspace chatter has included debates about the interracial sex, the politics and the clothes. Ms. Washington's remark this year that she would have turned down the role had the president been black (out of concern that such a character might reflect an insider's view of Mr. Obama, whose administration she volunteers for) drew attention, too. "We're putting a lot of our hopes on Kerry's shoulders," said Yaba Blay, an assistant professor of Africana Studies at Drexel University, who live-tweets about the show with a group of female academics. "The conversations about her go beyond the role, to the idea of representing us well as middle-class and upper middle-class, educated women," mostly because of the scarcity of such images of black women. "We are the same women the media has said are not attractive, are not marriageable," she added. If that sounds like pressure, Ms. Washington, who comes across as thoughtful, brainy and down to earth in an interview, said she had never felt undue responsibility for presenting a certain brand of black womanhood. In her view, she said, it's more a matter of Hollywood executives catching up with a changing world. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of George Washington University, where she designed an interdisciplinary major that covered theater, anthropology and sociology, Ms. Washington clearly knows the stakes: "I wanted "Scandal" to be a success because I wanted networks and studios to believe that people of color and that women can be the driving force - both separately and when you happen to have both. I feel proud that we live in a world where "Scandal" can succeed. It wasn't up to me. The variable was the audience: Was the audience going to be ready? With Ms. Washington in "Scandal" and a black man in the real Oval Office, it seems a long time ago that Teresa Graves was the first black woman to star in a network drama. She played an undercover cop in "Get Christie Love!" on ABC in 1974-75, which was canceled after one season. It drew attention as a barrier-breaker but never achieved high ratings. Ms. Graves eventually abandoned acting and died in 2002.