Page 48 - My FlipBook 1

ing at the moment. He rewrites the same words over and over and over. He has filled notebooks all over the house. Sometimes he writes horizontally, in a
circle, or in different colors. It helps with his dyslexia. Sometimes he writes out his prayers.
Though we’re two strangers in different time zones staring at screens, it’s impossible not to notice that Washington is one hell of a storyteller. When he really
gets into a memory, his iPad slips and I stare at the collar of his shirt and scruffy chin, not wanting to interrupt. “Oh, sorry!” he says when he notices, then he
keeps talking. He learned to spin a yarn from his grandparents, sitting around a fire in their North Carolina yard. It’s storytelling that makes him love acting. But
when I ask him about his dad, he sounds ever so slightly different. Rehearsed. People have been asking him the same questions about his dad his whole life.
But now, this time, he’s telling John David’s story.

C H A P T E R O N E

Those who know Washington know his movie mar- Washington went by JD in school—except to his
athons. They’ve sat for hours, watching three, four, three younger siblings. “He never let us call him that
five films back to back. They’ve seen him study each when we were kids, only his friends . . . . We weren’t
movement onscreen and then recite back dialogue, cool enough, lol,” his younger sister Olivia says in
practice accents. Within minutes of the start of our an email. If you ask those who knew him best then,
first conversation, he is giving me his take on The they’ll tell you JD was a sports fanatic. They’ll say
Sopranos and Sex and the City—both shows that we they barely remember him mentioning acting at all.
missed the first time around because we were in “He would literally have a football in his hand,
college. I’m a season into The Sopranos, watching just waiting for all the kids to show up, and then
it for the first time during quarantine. He got into we’d start playing football every single morning,”
SATC when he was in the NFL, buying the pink book says photographer and longtime friend Dominic
with the full series on DVD. He tells me all about Miller, who shot Washington for this story. “That
how that era of HBO made him fall in love with TV. was his love: sports.”
“Charlotte [from SATC], that was my girl. I love her,” When he began playing football at the end of ele-
he says. “I love what they do with Carmela, Edie mentary school, he fell in love with the competition
Falco’s [Sopranos] character, in the later seasons. and the attention. Football felt like his own domain,
I love what they allow her to do and where she goes, though his father coached his teams, sometimes
especially when . . . I don’t want to give it away, but borrowing, at least in Washington’s mind, from his
I just think it’s some of the most brilliant acting I’ve most famous monologues for inspiration.
ever seen.” Like everyone else, he’s been watching It was Washington’s second year of tackle foot-
Tiger King lately: “I’m really curious about what ball, in seventh grade, when he started to hesitate
happened to old girl’s husband . . . . Honestly, I don’t before contact. His dad took him into the backyard
know if I should say this, but I want to know more of the house and had him hit a punching bag again
information. They should reopen the case is what and again. It felt like all night, even if it was prob-
I think. Coincidence? I don’t think so.” ably only a few minutes. It was like a scene straight
Washington has been analyzing—really studying— out of He Got Game, in which his dad played the
filmmaking since he was a kid. Perched with his father of a star basketball prospect. And when it
mom in the video village, where key crew members came time to play, and his dad gathered the team
sit on a movie set, he saw characters come to life on around on the sidelines to give them an impas-
the small monitors, little snippets of the stories being sioned speech to take them through the end of the
created just feet away. When he was on set for Mal- game, the words sounded familiar.
colm X, Spike Lee asked his parents if their six-year- This is from the Malcolm X speech, right? Wash-
old son could be part of the final scene, a flash-forward ington thought.
to decades after the civil-rights activist’s death, in That Malcolm X role was the one that propelled
which schoolchildren shout, “I am Malcolm X.” (“I his dad into bona fide stardom. Washington was
didn’t have to be an Einstein to grab [Denzel’s] kid only a kid when it came out, so all he saw was the
and put him in the movie,” Lee tells me. “That’s a change in how people treated his dad. He was no
good film to have as a first film on your résumé.”) longer the only one idolizing Denzel. As a child,

48 SUMMER 2020