Denzel Washington Found It Weird Seeing His Son in ‘Tenet’
Actor Denzel Washington’s son John David Washington added to his resume by starring in the Christopher Nolan sci-fi feature Tenet. John David was already featured in several films by that point, but Washington found Tenet to be one of his son’s biggest films.
Denzel Washington’s reaction to ‘Tenet’
It seems Nolan had his eye on John David for a long time. Long before Tenet even went into production, Nolan stumbled onto a few of the actor’s earlier projects. He was more than impressed by what Washington brought to the table. In an interview with Esquire, it was noted that Nolan first became aware of John David after seeing him in the HBO series Ballers. From there, his interest in the actor grew after seeing the premiere of John David’s critically acclaimed film Blackkklansman.
“That was an extraordinary screening, and the audience response to Spike’s movie was really electric in that room at Cannes; it was quite something. And I just felt a sort of magnetism there. It really was an important thing for me in terms of feeling like it was meant to be somehow,” Nolan said.
John David stuck in Nolan’s head so much that when he began developing Tenet, he immediately saw John David as the lead for the film. Nolan recruited his Tenet star by contacting him personally.
“In my first conversation with him, he just felt like somebody on the cusp of really great things. And so from a selfish point of view as a filmmaker, you immediately think, I’d like to be a part of that actor’s journey. I’d like to harness that energy that he has,” Nolan said.
John David’s father, Washington, couldn’t get over his son being cast in a Nolan movie. In an interview with Cinemablend, he couldn’t help get emotional while recalling the whole experience.
“It was too weird,” Washington said. “First of all, we went to Chris’ house and screened it in his theater. So I’m sitting here, now I’m watching my son starring in a Christopher Nolan movie in Christopher Nolan’s house, so there was a lot going on. I’m looking at my son, and I’m like, ‘He sounds like me.’ I’m like, ‘Of course, he sounds like you, stupid. He is you.’ There were so many things that I was experiencing as a father.”
Why John David Washington couldn’t get out of bed filming ‘Tenet’
For John David, shooting Tenet wasn’t an easy process. Nolan was no stranger to shooting action scenes in his films. But he shared that Tenet ended up being his most action-packed feature yet. This is where John David’s natural aptitude for physicality came in handy.
“It has a plethora of action sequences that he’s taken the lead in,” Nolan said. “So he gets to do all kinds of different things. That athleticism also puts itself into the way he walks down the street and the way he talks and the way he moves.”
Nolan even felt John David’s movements could be compared to Sean Connery’s in a way. Nolan recalled how one of the reasons Connery was cast as James Bond was because of the way Connery moved. It reminded Nolan of the experience he had working with John David.
“I remember years ago reading an account of when [Bond franchise producer] Cubby Broccoli first saw Sean Connery and considered him to play James Bond,” Nolan said. “He looked out the window and watched him walk away at the end of the meeting and said, ‘He moves like a panther, he moves like a cat, like a catlike grace,’ and I think John David has his own version of that. In every move, there’s this extraordinary athleticism and energy. This kind of controlled energy just fits this type of character so well. He’s just extraordinarily graceful.”
But those action scenes weren’t easy for John David to pull off. He asserted that the feature pushed him to his physical limit.
“There were some times I couldn’t get up out of bed. A couple weeks in, I was worried, very concerned I wasn’t going to be able to finish this thing, and I didn’t want to tell anybody because I was like, ‘Oh, I will die for this,’ ” he said. “It was like, in the NFL, I felt like I needed to be there every day to keep my job, and I felt the same way about this. This film deserves it. Even if I break something, I am not going to say nothing to nobody until this thing gets done.”
