The role of a Women’s Army Corps officer in Tyler Perry’s World War II drama The Six Triple EightKerry Washington gave her voice an edge – and her three children didn’t recognize it.

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

Has Washington practiced what she calls the “barking” tone at home? “No, I wouldn’t get away with using that voice with my kids,” she says, laughing.

The Emmy winner who has also appeared in the plays on Broadway race And American sonShe relied on her previous experience to take on the role of the groundbreaking Major Charity Adams.

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“I am super grateful for my theater training. I can breathe and speak from my diaphragm, and I’m also very grateful for my Shondaland training in knowing how to metabolize multiple monologues in a week,” says Washington, nodding to her character Olivia Pope in the Shonda Rhimes series to scandal.

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

“I worked with a vocal coach and Tyler and really spent a lot of time thinking about how to make sure I do something I’ve never been before and become someone I’ve never been before. And the voice had a lot to do with it,” adds Washington, who also speaks with a Southern accent. (The real Adams was from South Carolina.)

The Six Triple Eight – Also starring Oprah Winfrey, Ebony Obsidian and Susan Sarandon, it tells the incredible true story of the only all-black unit in the Women’s Army Corps that served in Europe during World War II.

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

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

“They didn’t send us because they thought we could do it. We’re here because they’re sure we can’t,” Washington, like Adams, tells her unit in the trailer.

The Six Triple Eight is now streaming on Netflix.

More information about Kerry Washington and The Six Triple Eightpick up the new issue of PEOPLE.

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