“He’s in bed with the devil”: the role that let Denzel Washington go crazy
Plenty of actors will tell you that the best thing about their job is being able to completely and utterly step out of themselves and into someone new. When that character is totally different from the person playing it, and especially if that character has a complete lack of inhibitions, the freedom is dizzying…or at least it was for Denzel Washington.
In his decades-long career, Washington has become more than familiar with this feeling. Whether he’s playing dramatic figures that demand a new kind of severity from him, or comedic figures that allow him to let loose, or even if he’s taking on the weighty challenge of playing a historical figure as important as Malcolm X, each role demands that he drops himself and picks up someone else.
But a good actor isn’t seen. Really, a great actor is a disappearing thing who vanishes on screen. Instead, the viewer should only be able to see the character so they can get lost in the story and be fully immersed in it without thinking ‘wow, American actor Denzel Washington is doing a really good job here’. It should just be the role he’s playing, he should fade into it.
Sometimes that’s tough and sometimes that’s fun, but on the set of Gladiator II, it felt like something else altogether. Playing the villainous Macrinus, there was a sort of manic energy to disappearing inside a character like that.
“He’s trying to use everybody. He’d use his mother, he’d use his own children; he’s already used up his soul, so he didn’t have any left. He’s in bed with the devil,” Washington said of his character. With no morals and only a rageful mission on his mind, dropping into Macrinus felt like a role that demanded him to drop all sense of morality.
That task was helped by the insane scale of the production. With a budget of around $310million, director Ridley Scott cut no corners. Instead, he went all in to make the world of the movie feel immersive for the actors as well as the viewers, making it even easier for them to get lost in these roles.
“When you would walk around, you were in Rome, and it seemed like 10,000 extras and horses,” he said, claiming that it didn’t feel like a set at all, but real life. It definitely helped him get into character, but still, it was an insane role to be getting immersed in as he added, “It was make-believe, it was play, it was fun; just put the gear on, put the dress on and go, that’s the way I look at it. I’m putting this dress on, these rings, and I’m going crazy.”
It paid off in the performance as Washington truly does disappear inside the character. But no doubt, the mindset that puts an actor in is a tough one to navigate, especially when you’re moving around a full-scale set that makes the whole thing feel real.
