Gladiator II has been a blessing for many reasons – Paul Mescal in a skirt, Pedro Pascal in a skirt, the return of a beloved classic in all its glory… The main one, however, has been seeing and hearing the legend that is Denzel Washington willingly and freely dish out tidbits of precious wisdom every chance he gets.
At the film’s Los Angeles premiere on Monday, the 69-year-old was approached by TikTok content creator Chewkz for acting advice, telling Washington he creates his own work and platform online. The actor was quick with his response: get off your phone and join a theater company, any theater company.
You can’t learn to be an actor online. You got to get on the stage. Find a little theater. Anything, even if you’re just the guy holding his spear in the back of the thing — You got to get on stage. That’s where I started. If you want what I got, do what I did.”
Though that might sound dismissive of Chewkz’s work for those who see the potential of social media for the democratization of access to the entertainment industry, don’t get it twisted, Washington was only trying to be encouraging. At the end of the exchange, he turned to the younger man and told him, “I’ll see you at work.” That’s as great of a motivator and confidence boost as you can get from one of the greatest actors of all time.
For the twice-Oscar-winning actor, there’s no greater school than theater because that’s where the actors have the most control, whereas “TV and films are a director’s medium,” he told The Times. That moment on stage is theirs to conduct, there’s no second take or mid-scene notes.
Washington, who got his start at San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater, recently stunned The Graham Norton Show viewers by reciting a monologue from Othello, the Shakespeare tragedy he first played at 22 and will reprise, on Broadway, at 70. Paul Mescal, Saoirse Ronan and Eddie Redmayne sat watching him in awe.
Washington may be traditional in his approach to acting, but he’s also one of the biggest champions of young talent in Hollywood. For example, he famously helped Phylicia Rashad pay for Chadwick Boseman and Susan Kelechi’s summer programs at Oxford University when they were students at Howard University.
When he worked with a 19-year-old Glen Powell in The Great Debaters, Washington pushed him “out of the nest,” telling him “You should double-down on yourself. You should give this a shot.” According to the Anyone But You star, when they bumped into each other after his recent breakout fame, the older man joked, “You owe me.”
While directing Michael B. Jordan on 2021’s A Journal for Jordan, Washington connected the younger actor to a storyboard artist who would go on to help him make Creed III, his directorial debut. “That’s D, man. He’s willing to do anything to help. He wants to pass on knowledge and make art a little easier in however he can help,” Jordan told AP Entertainment.
Lately, Washington has been mentoring Gladiator II star Paul Mescal, who got his blockbuster start in the Ridley Scott mega-production but is returning to the stage in 2025 to do A Streetcar Named Desire again. “It’s the right thing to do, and shows he’s a legitimate, serious actor and has got his head screwed on right,” the older man told Variety.
The duo’s entire conversation for British Vogue is worth a watch, but the final moments may or may not have put this jaded entertainment writer on the verge of tears.
I pray for your generation, because we did not have to deal with what you’ve had to deal with. And it’s our fault for putting it in your hands. There were no nine million opinions of every moment of my day and people that like you and then, suddenly, they hate you, and you don’t understand why.”
If only every person of Washington’s generation was as generous to those now inheriting their legacy.