Denzel Washington, star of The Equalizer 2, is here to help
IN The Equalizer 2, superstar Denzel Washington reprises his role as Robert McCall, helping the less fortunate with brutal efficiency.
Entertainment
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OCCASIONALLY, a brave fan approaches Denzel Washington and spouts one of the star’s famous lines back at him.
“King Kong ain’t got s--- on me!” from Training Day.
“My man,” from American Gangster.
Or, soon enough: “Make sure I get a five-star rating,” from his new film, The Equalizer 2.
If you’re brave enough to spout it, Washington is generous enough to take it. Just.
“That’s cool, that’s something they remember,” he says. “I mean, I moved on … but that’s still cool.”
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While moviegoers celebrate all those times Denzel Washington is supercool or Oscar-worthy or saves the day, the man himself simply turns his attention to the next one: “I shoot it and move on,” he says later, of his “don’t over-think it” approach to making movies.
And it’s this approach that makes Washington’s return to familiar ground in The Equalizer 2 so intriguing — the action flick marks the first sequel of his 40-year career.
As he talks about his character’s journey in the film, you get the feeling he’d come back for a third, too.
In The Equalizer, released in 2014, Robert McCall was working in a hardware store, trying to leave his mysterious past behind, until a young woman in peril motivated him back into action, dispatching the bad guys with a hammer or a corkscrew, whatever everyday item was at hand.
In the new movie, McCall is driving for a ride-hailing app, cutting down entitled party boys with the swipe of a credit card (literally), until the death of his one true friend forces him to confront his old life and colleagues and, maybe, find his way home.
“Home seems to be a lonely place for him,” Washington says, contesting that thesis. “I think he’s still lost.”
Maybe, we suggest, there could be a third film where he’s found.
“I like that,” Washington laughs. “What would be his next job? What line of work would he go into?”
Hardware store, Lyft driver … preacher?
“A preacher? No, he couldn’t get away with that one,” the actor scoffs. “He’s gotta fit in, it’s gotta be ordinary people and he’s gotta hide in plain sight.”
Put him in customer service and watch him …
“Be driven mad!” Washington finishes the thought, laughing. “That’s terrible. Maybe he works in a little bodega, a grocery store …”
… Where he kills someone with a packet of Pringles.
“That’s right,” Washington cheers. “Pound ’em with a bag of pretzels.”
Washington has done many things in multiples across his career: He won two Oscars, for Glory and Training Day, and been nominated for seven others. He played icons (in Malcolm X and The Hurricane), worked with director Antoine Fuqua (both Equalizer movies, Magnificent Seven and Training Day).
So how has he resisted repeating himself on-screen, until now?
“I’m not wired that way,” he shrugs. “And I’m very fortunate in that, at least in the last 15-20 years, I have had three different jobs: as a movie actor, as a film director and as a stage actor.
“I just finished Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh (on Broadway) — nothing I did in Equalizer was gonna help me get through that,” he laughs. “He has these long speeches where he talks for 30 minutes straight and it’s a completely different discipline, a different exercise than The Equalizer. I like that about my job.”
To cut to the chase, Washington has clocked up his first sequel in The Equalizer 2 simply because, he says: “They came up with a good idea”.
And while Fuqua has a theory about Washington only doing a role if it teaches him something about himself, Washington insists the doing of the job is its own reward.
“Figuring it out, solving little problems every day, cutting and patching it, stitching it together and then you sit down four or five months later and … ‘Oh, it works!’.”
In the new movie, McCall remains compelled to lend a hand to the wayward and the downtrodden — be it the old Jewish man he drives to the copy store every day or the artistic kid from his apartment block who lost his brother to gang violence — by cutting down those who would harm them with brutal efficiency.
Fuqua says violence is a comfort zone for McCall; Washington doesn’t like that idea.
“Does he mean violence makes him comfortable? Or that he feels good about helping people? Because violence for the sake of violence as a comfort zone sounds more like a serial killer!”
But he does like the idea of being a friend to the wayward and the downtrodden, because that’s his drive in life, too: “That’s my nature, to want to help people,” he says.
Fuqua recalls that while Washington was filming Fences in Pittsburgh in 2016, the star spotted a boy, about 12 or 13, walking down the street when he should have been in school.
“Denzel had his driver pull over, he got out and went and started talking to the kid. He eventually made the kid take him to his mum and find out what was going on, and he helped the kid,” the director says.
“I’ve seen him do that many times and he doesn’t talk about it, he doesn’t look for praise. That’s really how Denzel is as a person.”
At the dawn of the 1980s, a fledgling Washington was forced to confront the reality that acting might not pan out and think hard about alternate career paths.
“I didn’t even have this career, so I didn’t get as far as what was going to be my next career,” he laughs. “But there was the reality of: I gotta pay bills, I gotta get a job and pay the rent. Then I caught a little TV show called St Elsewhere in 1982 and basically I haven’t looked back since.
“But right before that it was like, this is not fun — you work and then you don’t work for eight months; you might get two months’ work then you’re out of work again, you know … an actor’s life.”
Even then, his back-up option involved helping people.
“I’d done a lot of work with kids, like working in camps,” he explains, “so I guess I would have gone back to that. In fact, I put in an application for a job at a city recreation department in my home town, right before I got … some good job. But yeah, I was struggling there for a while.”
Even the celebrated Denzel Washington has to occasionally marvel at where he’s made it to, all these years later, with his own children now following in his footsteps. (Eldest son John David Washington is the star of Spike Lee’s acclaimed BlacKkKlansman, in cinemas next month.)
Earlier this year, when the 63-year-old went to New York to prepare The Iceman Cometh, he found himself back where that struggle began — NY’s Fordham University — for a TV interview.
“We did the interview at my alma mater, on the stage where I started acting 40-something-whatever years ago. You know how when you go back some place you haven’t been in years, everything looks small?” he asks.
“To go through the rooms where I used to be in class and then suddenly … hey, I’m on Broadway!”
He shakes his head.
“I guess in a way, the journey wasn’t that far, ’cos it was only about four or five blocks from where I was working.”
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