The actor recalled how a scene from the film directed by Ridley Scott almost ended in the worst way.
The actor Josh Brolin revealed a hitherto unknown episode that happened on the set of American Gangster (2007). The movie starring Russell Crowe and Denzel Washingtonalmost saw Brolin fight with the actor from Gladiator 2.
In a recent interview with Graham Bensinger, Brolin, who was promoting his new memoir From Under the Truck, reflected on his career and upbringing, including what he described as a fleeting moment in which he and his co-star almost came to blows.
What was the time Josh Brolin and Denzel Washington almost ended up beating each other?
“By the way, Denzel and I get along very well now.”prefaced the anecdote, and then described Washington as someone he “admired.” “We almost got into a fight.”
He continued: “Denzel was a little late to the set and there was a whole deal going on there. And then he showed me the lines; It didn’t change any of my lines, but it changed the structure a little. He said, ‘I think I’m going to put this here and I’m going to put that there.’ But he didn’t really look at me.”
“I tried to remember the structure and then we rehearsed,” the Dune actor recalled. “There weren’t that many lines, most of them were mine. And I’m supposed to be very confident. It’s Denzel Washington. It’s not easy. You are an actor who is being tested to see if he is the real actor or not. And I forgot a line. I put my hand on his shoulder and said, ‘What’s the line?’ and he took it from me and said, ‘Don’t put your hand on me again.’. And I thought: ‘Shit, I’m going to fight Denzel Washington. This is crazy.’ We are no longer actors, at least in my mind. “In his mind, he was just doing his job.”
Brolin said he later realized that the Gladiator 2 star had simply settled into his character: “He was that guy. It was Frank Lucas, period. But I didn’t know it. And then we got through that moment. I said, ‘Are you okay?’ He said: ‘Yes. You?’. I said, ‘Yes. Can I say my line?’ He said, ‘Go ahead.’ “It’s like I said what I needed to say.”
As a seasoned veteran, Brolin said he understands why actors focus so much on their performance as Washington in that moment, and he’s heard of others who do too, including his friend Robert Duvall. But as an actor starting out, “you just want to have an experience with that person… and those guys are just trying to do their job, so it makes sense to me that they reduce outside life to [algo más pequeño] any way they can.”
Source: Ambito
