When Denzel Washington insisted on a “violent, awful” movie death to avoid making a sequel
Until he found the role of the unstoppable killing machine Robert McCall, Denzel Washington was notably allergic to sequels. Indeed, in his career, the three Equalizer movies are the only time he’s reprised a character in multiple films.
This isn’t to say that Hollywood didn’t try to convince Washington to make a sequel or two in the past, though, nor that there weren’t characters he would have liked to play again in an ideal world. For instance, he went on record to say he wanted to play 1940s PI Ezekiel ‘Easy’ Rawlins again, but to his chagrin, Devil in a Blue Dress didn’t make enough money at the box office to warrant a sequel.
Amusingly, he also admitted that he would have gladly returned as the avenging bodyguard John Creasy. However, Washington claims he didn’t realise Man on Fire was actually based on a series of books until after it had been decided Creasy would perish at the end of Tony Scott’s ultra-violent 2004 revenge thriller.
Fascinatingly, though, on another occasion, while playing one of his most beloved roles, Washington became suspicious that the studio was angling for a sequel. This time, he was dead set against such an idea, so he outright refused to shoot the ending the studio wanted. To his mind, his character was so thoroughly despicable that the movie would send the wrong message if he didn’t get his comeuppance at the end – in the most shocking way possible.
Now, this isn’t to say that Washington didn’t have a ball playing the world’s most charismatic corrupt detective, Alonzo Harris, in 2002’s Training Day; he most certainly did. However, Washington is a fiercely moral man with a strong faith, and he always insisted Harris had to pay for his sins at the end of the film.
When he first read the script, though, he wasn’t happy with Harris’ fate. It’s not clear whether Harris survived in this version of the screenplay or if his punishment simply wasn’t great enough for Washington’s liking, but either way, it activated his Spidey sense.
“There was a bit of a cop-out the way the script was,” he told NPR in 2013, “And it smelled like they were looking to do a ‘part two’ or something.”
Unhappy with this denouement for the character, and not exactly keen on the thought of playing Harris again, Washington told director Antoine Fuqua, “I couldn’t justify him living in the worst way unless he died in the worst way.”
To the actor, Harris deserved to be “slapped around” while his community turned its back on him, leading to him “crawling around on the ground like a snake”. This Biblical imagery of a serpent was 100% intentional on Washington’s part, further emphasising that Harris was sin incarnate, and that would not be allowed to stand.
Ultimately, Washington got his way, and Training Day‘s ending played out the way he wanted, culminating in Harris getting “filled full of lead” in a “violent, awful” demise. Interestingly, while the actor was happy with this ending, some test audiences weren’t. In fact, Fuqua revealed that one test screening received such low scores because he had the temerity to kill off Washington that he “almost got run out of the theatre on that one”.
He chuckled, “People were pissed.”
