The only actor brave enough to call Denzel Washington a “motherfucker” on set
Not only do audiences agree that Denzel Washington is one of the greatest actors of the modern era, but most of the people he’s worked with, and plenty who haven’t but would love to, feel the same way. With that in mind, it takes an awfully bold thespian to call him a “motherfucker” to his face.
He’s a two-time Academy Award winner and ten-time nominee with three Golden Globes and a Tony, not to mention one of the few remaining stars in Hollywood who can lure people to their local cinema based on nothing but his name alone, especially when he’s beating the shit out of miscellaneous henchmen.
The raft of names to consider him either the best of his era or one of the undoubted all-time greats includes, but is in no way limited to, Ethan Hawke, Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Viola Davis, Michael B Jordan, and Quentin Tarantino, none of whom would consider cursing him out when he’s on set.
However, one person did, and the circumstances are nothing if not bizarre. In between his day job as a self-professed theatre actor that’s spent most of the last 40 years making movies, Washington has directed four features: Antwone Fisher, The Great Debaters, Fences, and A Journal for Jordan.
He’s only taken his behind-the-camera talents to television once, and for whatever reason, he decided that ‘The Sound of Silence’, the ninth episode of Grey’s Anatomy‘s 12th season, was the perfect place for him to make his small-screen debut as a filmmaker, and he probably regretted it once he ran afoul of the never-ending medical drama’s star and executive producer, Ellen Pompeo.
With the greatest of respect, it doesn’t take a master director or an innovative auteur to direct an episode of a series that’s in the midst of its 22nd run, but as the title character and focal point, Pompeo is more invested than most. As a result, when Washington wasn’t running the ship as smoothly as she liked, she decided to call him out on it.
When she didn’t take too kindly to a co-star’s acting choices, the actor lost her cool. “I yelled at him,” she admitted. “I was like, ‘Look at me! When you apologise, look at me!’ And that wasn’t in the dialogue.” Going off-script didn’t sit too well with her director, who “went ham on my ass.”
“He was like, ‘I’m the director! Don’t you tell him what to do!'” Pompeo continued. “I was like, ‘Listen, motherfucker, this is my show! This is my set! Who are you telling? You barely know where the bathroom is!'” Washington wasn’t exactly an avid Grey’s Anatomy viewer, but his wife, Pauletta, was, and the actor he’d wronged ran straight to his spouse to tell on him.
“I told his wife, I was like, ‘Yeah, he yelled at me today,'” Pompeo admitted. “Yeah, he let me have it today, and I am not OK with him, and I’m not looking at him, and I’m not talking to him.” For want of a better phrase, Washington didn’t give a fuck. When he was pressed for his side of the story, he claimed that he didn’t remember it even happening.
