The ‘Scandal’ alum plays a Women’s Army Corps officer in Tyler Perry’s World War II drama ‘The Six Triple Eight’

To play a Women’s Army Corps officer in Tyler Perry’s World War II drama The Six Triple Eight, Kerry Washington added an edge to her voice — and her three kids didn’t recognize it.

“When my kids saw the trailer for the film, they were like, ‘Whose voice is that? It doesn’t even sound like you.’ It was really funny,” says Washington, 47, who shares her children with her husband, actor and former NFL star Nnamdi Asomugha.

Did Washington practice what she calls the “barking” tone at home? “No, I would not get away with using that voice with my children,” she says with a laugh.

The Emmy winner, who has also performed on Broadway in the plays Race and American Son, relied on her previous experience to help nail the role of trailblazing Major Charity Adams.

Nnamdi Asomugha (left) and Kerry Washington in 2022.Jordan Strauss/JanuaryImages/Shutterstock

“I’m super grateful for my theater training. I know how to breathe and speak from my diaphragm, and I’m also really grateful for my Shondaland training that I know how to metabolize multiple monologues in a week,” says Washington, nodding to her character Olivia Pope on the Shonda Rhimes series Scandal.

“So those two things were really parts of my toolbox that I leaned into,” she adds.

“I worked with a voice coach and Tyler, and just really spent a lot of time thinking about how to make sure that I was doing something I’d never been before, becoming somebody I’d never been before. And voice had a lot to do with that,” adds Washington, who also speaks with a Southern accent. (The real Adams was from South Carolina.)

Kerry Washington in ‘The Six Triple Eight.’.Bob Mahoney/Perry Well Films 2/Courtesy of Netflix

The Six Triple Eight — which also stars Oprah Winfrey, Ebony Obsidian and Susan Sarandon — tells the incredible true story of the only all-Black unit of the Women’s Army Corps to serve in Europe during World War II.

The 855 women, led by Adams, were tasked with breaking through a logjam of mail and sorting through 17 million pieces of undelivered correspondence so the soldiers abroad could communicate with their loved ones at home.

Aside from appalling working conditions the women faced in the facilities (rats, no heat), they also grappled with racism and sexism from their fellow soldiers.

Kerry Washington (left) and Tyler Perry on Dec. 12.Alan Chapman/Dave Benett/Getty

“They did not send us because they thought we could do it. We are here because they are sure we cannot,” Washington, as Adams, tells her unit in the trailer.

The Six Triple Eight is now streaming on Netflix.

For more on Kerry Washington and The Six Triple Eight, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE.