Longtime Denzel Washington fans will be pleasantly surprised at the actor’s latest role as Macrinus in Gladiator II. Stopping at nothing to claim ultimate power, a human side still has driven his ruthlessness.
“I think he was a good man who had bad things happen to him. He had everything taken from him, and he was forced to survive to exist in the lion’s den,” Washington told EBONY. “So, when given the opportunity, he was gonna visit that on any and everyone that visited that on him. Absolute power corrupts.”
Not to anyone’s surprise, Washington certainly looks good bringing that ruthlessness to screen. Often seen floating in his toga—a term he’s now happily claimed as his own, he declared, “I’ve never ‘togaed’ before. There’s a certain freedom that is allowed in that kind of costuming. I try to take full advantage of that.”
From the moment the first trailer for the film dropped in early July, the Othello actor was proclaimed Hollywood’s reigning silver fox. “Oh, you mean my hair?” he replied when asked how he reacted to the public swooning over his silver hair and goatee. “It’s a look you’ll see from me in the future because I’m not putting nothing in my hair no more.”
As Washington embraces his strands and his 70th birthday on December 28, he’s allowing his children to step into the spotlight of the family business.
“I’m heading to the back of the bus. Olivia did a brilliant job in London in Slave Play. Malcolm’s a filmmaker. John David is an actor, and Katya is producing those films.”
In his role in Gladiator II, the star also took the time to examine our history as Black people during the Roman era. It allowed him to channel and lean on the strength of the ancestors, from African territories captured and forced to fight to the death in the barbaric Roman arenas to Black Americans forging a path after enslavement.
“I brought what we were forced to do in this country, America, to the screen. I brought my great-great-great grandfather, great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and father to the screen,” he revealed. “I tried to bring that history, that legacy, in a similar way that my son Malcolm is doing in The Piano Lesson…that pain and everything that comes with slavery or having been dominated.”
As for what he wants people to take away when watching Gladiator II, Washington declared, “Enjoy your popcorn. I’m gonna kill everybody. I’m killing everybody. There ain’t gonna be nobody left. There ain’t gonna be no Romans left when I’m finished!”
Gladiator II opens in Theaters on November 22.
