The 1995 movie scene Denzel Washington refused to shoot: “That’s your main motivating factor?”
As one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, if there’s a scene Denzel Washington doesn’t want to shoot, then it’s almost a foregone conclusion that Denzel Washington isn’t going to shoot that scene.
However, that opens the door to some questions. Namely, why did he read the script, sign on to take the top-billed role in the adaptation of that script, and then wait until the movie was in production to voice his aversion to a particular sequence, which sent the production scrambling to work around it?
Surely he’d have noticed it on his first read-through, decided then and there that it wasn’t for him, and then reached out to the screenwriters, filmmakers, or producers to request an alteration? He didn’t, and the result was an entire subplot being dropped and reworked, much to his co-star’s chagrin.
Not that it was for a film that anyone gave much of a shit about, right enough, with Washington deservedly lumping 1995’s Virtuosity in with the rest of the “clunkers” that he made during that period. Still, Kelly Lynch got the raw end of the deal, with her character being the most heavily impacted.
The story follows Washington’s ex-cop, imprisoned for 17 years for accidentally killing two news reporters while apprehending a suspect, who gets a pardon dangled in front of his face if he can track down and stop Russell Crowe’s virtual reality antagonist, who gained sentience and fled into the world to cause chaos.
Naturally, there was a potential love interest in the shape of Lynch’s criminal psychologist, Madison Carter. Or, there was supposed to be a definite love interest until Washington put his foot down and informed his co-star that under no circumstances would he shoot the scene that cemented their romantic entanglement.
“I said, ‘Denzel, what is it? Why don’t you believe that the man you’re playing couldn’t be attracted to me?'” she recalled. “I mean, it wasn’t a cheesy love story. It was actually really well-written and moving. And he said, ‘You know what, Kelly? I hate to say it, but, you know, white men bring women to movies, and they don’t want to watch a Black man with their woman.'”
Understandably, Lynch was taken aback by that. “No, I’m sorry, but that’s truly what it is,” Washington maintained. “That’s what the audience is.” She pointed to The Bodyguard, which had been a massive hit shortly before Virtuosity went into production, with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston as the leads.
“Well, that’s different,” the two-time Academy Award winner replied. “That’s a white man. It’s different.” He wasn’t for budging, despite Lynch’s pleas. “So that’s your main motivating factor on this?” she asked him, and the reply was a simple, “Yes.”
That was the end of that, as far as Washington was concerned, and from that point on, “the love story wasn’t a love story anymore,” and Virtuosity‘s script needed a rejig.
