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Spain.-John David Washington has gone from being Denzel’s son to Denzel being his father.
The nuance is so important that he explains it himself. “It’s curious. Throughout my sporting life as a professional soccer player, all journalists referred to me as the son of the actor.
It seemed like every pass, every touchdown, every so often… he had done it. In fact, if there was a reason I didn’t want to act, it was because I didn’t feel capable of dragging that slab for life. If that happened in sports, what wouldn’t happen in the cinema?
In the end I jumped in and, what a coincidence, it has been thanks to the cinema that they have stopped reminding me of my father in every interview, in every review, in every comment, “said the now actor.
“Maybe I should have started by raising another topic?
“Now the questions are about my work, right?
And so it is. Or almost. The truth is that he has earned it or, at least, that is how he feels it and, already put, the world in all its extension.
The actor was at the Cannes Festival. There, at the hands of Spike Lee, his character as a black policeman infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan earned him at least the title of worthy heir.
Then it was the turn of Tenet, by Christopher Nolan, and with the only blockbuster (or almost) that defied the pandemic in theaters it reached the highest level.
“There is one important thing,” he says precisely and to avoid perhaps an uncomfortable question. And it continues: Nolan trusted me and gave me the role of a spy, not a black spy or an African American who is also a spy.
He was a spy and that’s it ”. “Malcolm & Marie”, directed by Sam Levison and that has just premiered Netflix, is the story of an egocentric and exasperated macho film director who at one point flies into a rage because, despite all his efforts and his obvious talent , an imagined critic only sees in him a black director determined to talk about his blackness.
Is it your case?
“In part, yes. There are many things from my beginnings that I would like to forget. And that’s why I’m not going to remember them here. But I imagine that maturing and growing consists of forgiving yourself, understanding yourself and assimilating all that as part of the journey.
Now I am proud of what I was ashamed of ten years ago.
Actor
– The label
John David solemnly declares all that he owes his father. “He is still my hero. It always has been. Even when I broke a record as a player and the next day the headline was Denzel Washingto’s Son. “
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