JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON
Photographs by Gregory Harris Styling by Michael Philouze
Raised in a family of actors, preachers, musicians and intellectuals, John David Washington has a distinctive cadence that resonates with a strong sense of belonging, like a coiled spring of physical and mental energy. Maybe it’s because he graduated from Morehouse College, the private university of the African-American intelligentsia where Reverend Martin Luther King studied after the war. Or perhaps it was the role Spike Lee gave him in BlacKkKlansman (2018), the true story of a police officer who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan. He prepared for that part by channelling his cultural roots. “For months I only listened to ’70s music. I went to bed with Soul Train in my ears and watched Super Fly over and over. And I often phoned my uncles, Vietnam veterans, to understand what it meant to be men, and black, at that time in American history.”
Having grown up in the Toluca Lake neighbourhood of Los Angeles with his father Denzel Washington (who was Spike Lee’s Malcolm X) and his mother Pauletta Pearson (an actress and pianist), John David is now a modest 36-yearold gentleman. “My mother taught me to love,” he says on the phone from LA, where he spent lockdown with his parents and three younger siblings. “My father taught me to hunt,” but not in the sense of killing animals, he explains. “Instead, it’s about being relentlessly scientific about your approach to life and work. It’s about developing a system and putting in the hours, because nobody’s going to hand you anything – you have to get it yourself. That’s how a hunter lives.”
For years John David was chasing the wrong prey, failing to break free of the mental fetters that he had placed on the course of his own life. To assert his independence, he chose football and became a promising university running back. His dream of NFL stardom seemed within reach, yet it remained a tantalising mirage. Perhaps he was unlucky, or maybe he was subconsciously living in denial of his true calling as an actor. And now that he’s following his artistic vocation, he’s steadily finding inner peace. He was first cast as a leading character in the HBO series Ballers, playing a hothead athlete. Then Spike Lee gave him the role that won him a Golden Globe nomination. After that came
Monsters and Men, where he had the part of a policeman who lacked the courage to report abuses against black communities. And finally there’s Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, the action movie that has made him an international celebrity.
What was it like returning home and sleeping in your teenage room?
It brought back some of the best memories of my life. Like when I was 12 and my father took me to see the Lakers versus the Chicago Bulls at the Los Angeles Forum. We beat the Bulls and after the game I got to go to the locker room, where Michael Jordan signed the shoes he played in that night. I’ve still got them hanging in my room.
They could be worth more than a Hollywood part.
Well, if this Covid thing continues and the cinema business falls flat, I’ll seriously consider selling them.
Do you like writing?
Lately I’ve been writing a journal about my experiences of being back in LA. But I’m not consistent with it. It depends on what’s going on in my life. I was heavily into writing when I started acting. I’d write my prayers down, literally the words that I was thinking when I was talking to God.
Usually it’s saints who write prayers.
It was about the process of getting from my heart to my head to the pen. It made me more concentrated on what I was asking for and being grateful for. It was interesting reading those prayers again a few years later. I was embarrassed at some of them, but as I kept reading I realised where I was in my life at that time, how hopeful I was with this new frontier of acting. Praying is also a way to manage my expectations and to know I can achieve my goals if I believe in them, even if they’re beyond my understanding.
You attended a religious school founded by a reverend. Does it all come from there?
My mother’s grandparents were from North Carolina and they instilled it in me early. I went to church often and I had to wear suits to Sunday school. The attire was very serious. We had to learn all the songs, too. My father’s father was a Pentecostal preacher from Virginia, so it was full-on God first in my upbringing. As a non-violent Christian, how did you put the necessary aggression into playing football, even at the risk of hurting someone?
I’d use the anger and resentment from people who thought I’d got everything handed to me. I’d put my personal issues onto the field – the frustration of not doing what I really wanted to do, which was to act. Everything that seemed to be a barrier or a deterrent, I’d use that as gasoline to ignite the fire of determination to make myself independent. After doubting your calling as an actor, what does it mean for you to finally say, “I am an artist”?
I felt like an artist as an athlete, too, because I was in character playing this football jock, if you will; because I had identity issues and I was trying to make my own name. I had so much drive to be independent and do football. But as far as being an artist in the entertainment business is concerned, I’m still chipping away at it.
It was as if you were living under cover, like your character in Spike Lee’s film.
In certain aspects, yes. For so long I was hiding my desire to do what I’m doing now.
What’s it like to have a voice inside you saying, “This isn’t me”?
I’d have to silence and bury that voice because I was afraid I’d already chosen football and maybe I’d have to become a coach or a teacher. I was afraid it was too late to change, so I might as well give up on other ambitions. I was almost replacing the pain of not doing what I really wanted to do with the pain of failure, the pain of not making the team.
Who saved you?
God. My mother was my saviour, and I also see how my father works incredibly hard. I see my grandfather and uncle the same way. I had plenty of examples of hard-working, unapologetic African-American men. So I had no excuses for failing.
How did your mother save you?
I had a tryout for an NFL team, the New Orleans Saints. I had a good camp and they got back to me saying, “You did great but we’ve signed another kid.” When you don’t make the cut they fly you back home, so I was in the airport feeling very emotional and I was telling my mum, “I think this is it, maybe I should quit football.” I thought she was going to say, “No, don’t quit, you’re going to make it.” But instead she was like, “Well, if you feel you have to, maybe you should.” I wasn’t expecting that. It saved me because I was looking for sympathy and she made me question what I had inside. After that I played for a while in an independent league called the UFL, where players can get back to the NFL if they play well enough. But that was the first time I really thought about getting into the arts. On 28 July 2013, on my 29th birthday, I tore my Achilles tendon and that was it for me.
Did you confide in your father?
No. My mother had to take me to the first audition for Ballers, because I couldn’t drive. I had a leg brace and I remember dragging myself up the stairs on crutches, stuffed with painkillers. My head was floating in a bubble. And it went great. When dad found out, he was over the moon. But then he went back to the same old hunter. “Once this thing’s over, start studying,” he said. “You’re still not good enough.”
Did you use your surname when you started doing auditions?
When I was in college, I used to have an alias because I didn’t want people to know. I remember one time when I was 18 I had a great game in Atlanta. I woke up the next day and a teammate burst in the door and said, “Hey, look at this.” He was holding up the local Atlanta Constitution newspaper, and I was on the cover of the sports section with the headline “Denzel Washington’s son has a great game.” He said, “From now on, we’re going to have to call you something else. We’re going to call you Mikey.” The headlines were always about who I’m related to instead of me doing what I was doing. Once I started acting I tried to just go with John David.
What’s your prayer for the present?
I’m still trying to grow and find myself as an actor, so right now I live for experiences that can peel back another curtain of what I can do. That’s what I mean about working with artists such as the Italian director Ferdinando Cito Filomarino. He helped me to access parts of myself that were really tucked-in, deep in the basement. [The film Born to Be Murdered is currently in post-production.] I also want to find love, peace and harmony.
Why? Aren’t you at peace now?
Yes. Actually, yes and no. I’m at peace until the next thing.