Denzel Washington recounts murder story from his childhood: “I ran with them real gangsters down there, but I was not them”
Denzel Washington has recounted a murder story from his childhood.
In a new interview with Esquire, the Gladiator 2 star spoke about how his friend’s brother killed someone during his younger years.
The actor said he was around 11 or 12 and living in New York when the incident happened. Changing the names to avoid their identity, he was told his friend’s brother was “crazy and he’s a killer” at the time.
Washington said: “I think he was Green Beret, those guys that would cut throats behind enemy lines. But he didn’t bother me none. We’d smoke weed together and he’d say, ‘You know, D, everybody’s scared of me, man. But you’re not scared of me.'”
And I said: “Well, man, you’re just Frank’s big brother.”
He then recalled the incident, adding: “Me and Frank [are] coming down the street and we see Robert with this guy Joe, and he tells Joe to go down to the grocery store to get him some Colt 45 malt liquor. Gives him some money. And as Joe takes off down the street, Robert says real quiet to me and Frank, ‘I’m gonna kill him tonight.’
“Just then, Joe turned around from down the street and hollered, Could he get two bottles Robert shouted back at him, all nice, ‘What? Yeah, yeah, get a bottle for yourself, too. And bring me back my change!’ Then he turned back to us and said, ‘See, he don’t know that I know he stole my motorcycle’ – Joe did steal it and either sold it or crashed it and burned it up or something like that – ‘and I just want him to have a good time on his last night living.'”
“So we ran to my house to get out of there – and then we ran back over there early the next morning, in a hurry to find out what happened. Well, when Joe got back with the Colt 45, Robert had stabbed him in the back of the neck. Then he closed the knife up and sat in the middle of the street in the lotus position, waiting for the police.”
Despite knowing gangsters in his younger days, Washington said he never got sucked into their lifestyle.
He added: “Those characters I played in Training Day, in American Gangster – it might look like they were close to me, and I could tell you they were, but I wasn’t no gangster. I ran with them real gangsters down there, but I was not them. So let me not tell that lie to you. I had one foot in the streets, but I ain’t no killer.”
Meanwhile, director Ridley Scott recently said Washington’s claim that a same-sex kiss got cut from Gladiator 2 is “bullshit”.
It came after the actor, who portrays Macrinus in the sequel to the 2000 blockbuster, told Gayety, he kissed a male co-star in a since-deleted moment.
Reviewing Gladiator 2, NME‘s Alex Flood awarded the movie three stars and said: “If you loved Gladiator, it’s odds-on you’ll enjoy this too. It’s got all of the same exciting bits – swordfighting, rousing speeches, nasty poshos getting what they deserve. The problem is that’s all it gives you.
“You want to feel like you’re watching Maximus lift off his helmet and deliver that iconic monologue for the first time again. You want the thrill of a core memory being unlocked. Gladiator 2, piously respectful as it is, can only offer a faded memory of that experience. There was a dream that was Rome – and this is kind of it.”
The film’s concurrent release with Wicked in the US has prompted some to dub the phenomenon Glicked, in reference to last year’s Barbenheimer.
The post Denzel Washington recounts murder story from his childhood: “I ran with them real gangsters down there, but I was not them” appeared first on NME.
Damian Jones
NME
