Kerry Washington has revealed she gets into character for Scandal by wearing the right shoes.

The actress plays former White House communications director Olivia Pope in the hit TV series and told The Edit magazine that she took inspiration from her alter ego’s power dressing.

She said: “The biggest thing for me are the shoes. I’ll wear Uggs around set, but I can’t rehearse a scene in them because I don’t feel like Olivia until I put the shoes on.

“Shoes define how you walk in the world and how you stand, like: what is your posture in life?”

Kerry Washington Scandal
Kerry Washington says heels are integral to being Olivia Pope (Craig Sjodin/ABC)

Kerry, who gave birth to daughter Isabelle in April last year, added that she had used Twitter to help hide her going into labour from the world.

She explained: “Every Thursday within three weeks of my due date, I loaded up pre-tweets based on the episodes and what I would want to say.

“I tweeted in the very early stages of my labour. I figured that if I went completely silent on social media, then people would know I was in the hospital.”