For nicely over 40 years, Denzel Washington has been dazzling audiences with one very good efficiency after one other. (He was the products from the beginning, even when he was paying his dues within the remarkably wrong-headed “Carbon Copy.”) He is clearly one among our best residing actors, and he seems to be having the time of his life mixing up his business efforts with critical inventive pursuits. And he will get infinity cool factors by insisting on staying on the “Late Present with David Letterman” sofa so he might get roasted by Don Rickles.
There have been disappointments alongside the way in which, a few of them profound (like Columbia Photos fumbling the launch of Washington’s Straightforward Rawlins franchise). For me, there are few Hollywood sins much less forgivable than the Academy of Movement Image Arts and Sciences giving Al Pacino the Greatest Actor Oscar for Martin Brest’s “Scent of a Girl” the identical yr that Washington gave one of many best movie performances ever in Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X.” Everybody knew the Academy was atoning for inexplicably giving Artwork Carney Greatest Actor for Paul Mazursky’s “Harry and Tonto” over Pacino’s majestic work in “The Godfather Half II” (additionally one of many best movie performances ever), however that does not make me really feel any higher concerning the injustice.
How does Washington really feel about this grave error in judgment 32 years later? Simply peachy, really!
Denzel Washington’s extra involved with pleasing God than Academy voters
In an interview on Jake’s Takes timed to the barely promoted theatrical launch of “Highest 2 Lowest” (Spike Lee’s new adaptation of Evan Hunter’s “King’s Ransom,” which was beforehand the idea for Akira Kurosawa’s masterful thriller “Excessive and Low”), Washington was requested the way it felt to have beforehand been nominated for 10 Oscars and received each Greatest Supporting Actor for Ed Zwick’s “Glory” and Greatest Actor for Antoine Fuqua’s “Coaching Day.” The star’s response? “I am not that taken with Oscars.”
Washington views his awards success from a religious perspective. “I do not care about that type of stuff,” he defined. “I have been at this a very long time, and there is time once I received and should not have received after which did not win and will’ve received. Man provides the award. God provides the reward.” That is an attention-grabbing reply. Lots of people (myself included) felt Washington’s “Coaching Day” Oscar ought to’ve gone to Tom Wilkinson for his devastating efficiency in Todd Subject’s “Within the Bed room.” Maybe Washington agrees!
Washington added, “I am simply not that taken with Oscars. Folks ask me, ‘The place do I maintain it?’ Properly, subsequent to the opposite one. I am not bragging! Simply telling you the way I really feel about it. On my final day, [Oscars] aren’t going to do me a bit of excellent.” When the interviewer expressed doubt that God cares about Oscars, Washington laughed and replied, “[God] may go, ‘That is why I gave you an additional week.’ [As] lengthy as he says, ‘Now, get on up right here,’ I am alright.”
I hope there is a heaven for all the plain causes, however I think about it is a spot the place the whole lot is feasible, which implies I would lastly get to interview Washington. And watch Rickles give him the enterprise.
“Highest 2 Lowest” opens in theaters on August 15, 2025, earlier than streaming on Apple TV+ a couple of weeks in a while September 5.
