Did Denzel Washington try to sabotage Ethan Hawke’s ‘Training Day’ audition?
Even though it served as the springboard for winning his second Academy Award and first in the ‘Best Actor’ category, Training Day began life without Denzel Washington in the role of Alonzo Harris.
In July 1999, it was announced that small screen veteran David Guggenheim was on board to make his feature-length directorial debut on the hard-boiled crime thriller with Samuel L. Jackson signed on to headline the cast, and Matt Damon set as upstart rookie police officer Jake Hoyt.
That’s a far cry from Antoine Fuqua steering the ship with Ethan Hawke alongside Washington, a decision driven partially by the latter’s reluctance to work with first-time filmmakers on major projects. Even Hawke was a million miles away from being at the top of list, and he was under the impression he wouldn’t get the part after believing his A-list counterpart had deliberately sabotaged him.
Eminem was the front-runner to take on the second lead but rejected the opportunity in favour of the semi-autobiographical 8 Mile, creating a heated casting battle that pitted Hawke against contemporaries including Tobey Maguire, Freddie Prinze Jr, Ryan Philippe, Scott Speedman, and Paul Walker, all of whom tested for Hoyt in an exhaustive process to find the perfect scene partner for Washington.
Hawke got himself in the room and maintained to The Hollywood Reporter that “Denzel and Antoine Fuqua really wanted me” despite the studio’s protestations, even if reading lines opposite Washington didn’t go according to plan. As the actor recalls, he was left so furious after his screen test that he was ready to put the world to rights and call the star out for cutting him off at the knees.
“Denzel went totally off book during my test,” he said. “And I walked out debating about whether to go back in and tell them all to go to hell because, you know, I felt like I had been sabotaged because we didn’t do anything that was on the page. And I didn’t think that was fair because he had the part.” The main character had already been cast, which left Hawke convinced that Washington had deviated from the script out of his own self-interest.
Seeing as he was hired, acquitted himself spectacularly in Training Day, and earned a ‘Best Supporting Actor’ nomination at the Oscars for his troubles, it would be an understatement to say he was a million miles away from being sabotaged.
Looking back, it’s clear that Washington was simply trying to catch Hawke off-guard and unaware to see if he was capable of rolling with the performative punches, something that would come in very handy on-screen when the more buttoned-down and stoic Hoyt is regularly caught in the slipstream of Harris’ megawatt charisma.
