Get your fix
We can’t take our eyes off The Fixer’s combination of secrets, scandal and style.
Yelling “fake news” or “alternative facts” whenever a politician messes up catastrophically really isn’t fooling anyone. It takes an artist to smoothe over a political scandal with fineness. In The Fixer (2012current – it’s called Scandal in the US and was recently renewed for a seventh season), that artist is former White House Director Of Communications Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington), who left politics to run her crisis management firm Pope & Associates. Her team of specialists include litigators Harrison Wright (Columbus Short) and Stephen Finch (Henry Ian Cusick), investigator Abby Whelan (Darby Stanchfield), tech expert Huck Muñoz (Guillermo Diaz), and newcomer Quinn Perkins (Katie Lowes). The team are ready to help Olivia cover up crises, smear the competition and even bury evidence and bodies. Once you bring a crisis to Pope & Associates, you can consider it discretely “handled”.
THE REAL OLIVIA POPE
The Fixer is inspired by the life of ex White House press aide Judy Smith (minus that affair with the president, of course). All it took was a 15-minute meeting that turned into a two-hour gab fest to convince The Fixer’s executive producer Shonda Rhimes that a show about a Judy-style heroine would rock TV audience’s worlds. Now Judy works as a consultant and co-producer on the series. “I come up with crisis ideas and send them to Shonda. And she will call and say, ‘What do you think about this?’ I read every script and send them notes. It’s fun,” she says. Judy also advises on protocol for state dinners and other technical details inside the White House, down to what would happen during an assassination attempt on the president.
FAB FIXER FASHION
And it isn’t just Judy’s fantastic career the show is drawing on. The Fixer fans revel in Olivia’s wardrobe choices. They
make her a stand-out in Washington, which has the reputation of being a dreary, frumpy city. Just compare reality show The Real Housewives Of Potomac (2016- current) with The Real Housewives Of New York (2008current) if you have any doubts. Judy shares a touch of Olivia’s style. In fact, she was once standing in a bank when a fellow client looked her over and said, “Oh, that looks like an Olivia Pope coat.” Plus, Judy shares Olivia’s favourite outfit colour – white.
WHITE HATS = GOOD GUYS
The Fixer’s costume designer Lyn Paolo explains that she dresses Olivia in a lot of white and pale colours because “I would like for her to be a beacon of light.” She adds, “It started out being just a visual thing and it evolved into being something about femininity. We didn’t want her to dress like a man, but we also wanted her to wear the pants. She doesn’t wear a skirt unless it’s in a flashback because I just thought that was kind of boring. So really, what we played with was the colour, the palette and the softness of the fabrics. She wears structure but the fabrics always have an amazing drape to them.”
But we think there’s another reason for white being Olivia’s go-to colour – it can really trick the eye. Standing out like a lightbulb lets Olivia dazzle our eyes so that we don’t see those unsavoury secrets she’s sneaking into the darkness…