When Denzel Washington tells you he really doesn’t pay attention to television, it’s not an exaggeration. At the beginning of a short interview to discuss their performances in Spike Lee’s entertaining thriller “Highest 2 Lowest,” we took a minute to congratulate Washington’s co-star, Jeffrey Wright, on his two Emmy nominations this year (Wright has been nominated seven times and won in 2004 for “Angels in America”). Despite a day of sit-down interviews. and press ops, Washington was completely unaware.
“Wait a minute, two as in two different shows,” Washington asks Wright.
“Yeah,” Wright replies.
Washington is still surprised. “At the same time. You got two different shows. That’s up for Emmys right now?”
“Yeah, one’s a VO thing. The other’s an acting thing,” Wright replies before turning to the. Zoom camera and noting, “He doesn’t have me because he doesn’t do TV.”
Washington quickly adds, “I don’t watch. I don’t watch anything. I don’t watch anything, so I don’t know who is doing what.”
We suggest that Washington might like “The Agency,” one of two series (the other being “The Last of Us,” which he’s nominated for), he’s currently part of.
“A TV show,” Washington states.
“That’s what I’m doing now,” Wright says.
“O.K.”
Wright adds, “Appreciate it. Thank you.”
Washington continues, “My wife was hooked on, what is it, LA? No, no. I don’t know. Yeah, she knows ’em. I don’t know any of ’em. I don’t even watch the movies I’m in as little as possible. I watched it once.”
What Washington was excited about was reuniting with Lee for the first time since “Inside Man” almost 20 years ago.
“I hired the right director, Spike,” Washington says. “I knew when I read the screenplay that I immediately called Spike, and I knew he was going to take it to another level, and I didn’t even realize what level he was going to take it to, but I wasn’t worried about it. He gives me the freedom to do my thing, and he fashions it together. I trust him completely, and he’s delivered.”
A contemporary adaptation of both Akira Kurosawa‘s 1963 classic “High and Low” and the novel it’s based on, Evan Hunter’s 1959 novella, “Kings Ransom,” Alan Fox’s screenplay centers on music mogul, David King (Washington). During a busy week when King is attempting to take back complete control of his legendary record label, his son is kidnapped (or so it appears). His driver and longtime personal confidante is Paul Christopher (Wright), whose own son gets involved in the hostage affair.
The duo first worked together on Jonathan Demme’s now underrated 2004 thriller “The Manchurian Candidate” (itself a remake of a classic 1962 film). For Wright, it was the chance to reunite with Washington and to, somewhat surprisingly, work with Lee for the first time, which drew him to a somewhat transformational role. Especially, “Having an appreciation and respect for the quality of the level of work that they’ve done in the past. So I had expectations that I would be in good company.”
He adds, “Of course, then Spike told me based on the Kurosawa, which is a brilliant film, interesting themes play out, and so I was on board. But again, it really was with a level of trust in what we would do together that led me. I didn’t really have to read the script. Of course, I read it once, but it was really the two of them that drew me in.”
For Washington, it was “all of the above.”
“I mean, you read a script,” the two-time Oscar winner states bluntly. “I don’t flip through ’em, I read ’em. I start on page one until I finish. Is it a story I’ve told before? Is it a character I’ve played before? Is this something I’m interested in? Is it something I’ve done? And in this case, who would be good for this? My agent, I guess it was to call and say, ‘Hey man, we’ve got something good here.’ I read it. I’m like, ‘Ooh, yeah, this is interesting.’ It was based on an original film I’ve never seen, ‘High and Low,’ so that had nothing to do with my decision to make this film.”
One of the intriguing aspects of “Lowest” is how succinct it is regarding current issues facing the music industry. We asked Washington about the research he did to play King and he beamed, retorting, “I did a ton of homework, yes, but I keep my homework to myself. If I told you I’d have to kill you, and you don’t want that? No, no.”
[Make no mistake, Washington was kidding.]
Wright is still filming season two of “The Agency,” but that Emmy-nominated character in “The Last of Us,” Isaac Dixon, is supposed to have a substantial role in the third season of the HBO phenomenon. In June, we’d asked his Emmy-nominated co-star, Kaitlyn Dever, if she knew when season three might begin. At the time, she knew nothing. Not much has changed from Wright’s perspective. Despite his always-busy schedule.
“I haven’t heard exactly when, but ideally there will be an opening [in my schedule],” Wright says.”No, it, it’ll be good to get back. It’s a great group of people, and Isaac gets up to some pretty interesting things, so yeah, it’ll be fun to get back there at some point.”
“Highest 2 Lowest” opens nationwide in theaters on Friday. It drops on Apple TV+ on Sept 5.
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