The rejected role that was rewritten 10 times for Denzel Washington: “I read the script, and it was dark”
Denzel Washington isn’t someone who dwells on regrets.
With a career as successful and enduring as his, he’s had little reason to look back and wonder “what if”. However, there is one classic film he’s admitted to turning down that left him with a slight pang of regret. Interestingly, missing out on that role might have influenced him to take on a few similar projects in later years. Fascinatingly, it was recently revealed that the filmmakers were so eager to secure Washington for the part that they rewrote the script ten times to accommodate him—but even then, he still said, “No thanks”.
In 2018, Washington sat down with fellow A-lister Jamie Foxx for a career-spanning interview. The two Oscar winners were in fine fettle, joking around and talking about the ins and outs of a career in Hollywood. Eventually, though, Foxx asked Washington if he’d ever said no to a movie that, in hindsight, he should have said yes to. Washington immediately replied, “Seven“, and added: “They wanted me to play the Brad Pitt part.”
This wasn’t the first time Washington had admitted to turning down David Fincher’s 1995 serial killer masterpiece. However, it was the first time he elaborated on what made him nervous to take on the project. “I thought the script was too demonic,” confessed the Training Day star, who wasn’t the only prominent actor to baulk at the grim, nihilistic nature of Andrew Kevin Walker’s script. In fact, Ned Beatty, who was approached to play John Doe at one point, reportedly dubbed the screenplay the “most evil thing I’ve ever read”.
In 2024, though, when Fincher was on the promotional trail for the 30th anniversary 4k re-release of Seven, he revealed that New Line Cinema tried to address Washington’s concerns regarding the script. In fact, it bent over backwards for him. The famed Zodiac and Fight Club director told The Independent, “I was told that Denzel had read the script, didn’t like it and that the script was then rewritten, like, ten or 11 times to suit him. It was rewritten ad nauseam, ad infinitum, in an attempt to get Denzel to say yes.”
Interestingly, Fincher claimed he had never interacted with Washington on the project because the star had already moved on by the time Fincher was hired as director. However, this doesn’t quite jive with what Washington once said, which indicated that Fincher’s inexperience was one of the reasons he passed on the movie. “I read the script, and it was dark,” Washington mused before adding, “David Fincher was new on the scene. I think he had only done one movie.”
Regardless of whose memory is more accurate than the other, the long and short of it is that Washington said no – even though New Line appointed his manager as a producer on the film. Fincher chuckled, “I think it was kind of a bait and switch. It was like, ‘If I produce the film, you can get Denzel.'”
Ultimately, Washington would lament his decision not to tackle the bleak, harrowing, yet thrilling project. He told Foxx that he was sure he’d done the right thing until he saw the finished film, but then he had to admit to himself, “Oh, I blew it”. The star was magnanimous in defeat, though, as he later told CTV News, “Evidently, it wasn’t for me. It was for Brad all the time.”
Interestingly, though, fans have long speculated that Washington may have regretted turning down the movie so much that it tangibly affected his choices going forward. After all, in the late ’90s alone, Washington signed up for the supernatural serial killer thriller Fallen and played novelist Jeffrey Deaver’s paraplegic detective Lincoln Rhyme in The Bone Collector. Unfortunately for him, though, neither film could touch Seven’s sheer brilliance – or its box office power.
