As Denzel Washington stepped onto the red carpet for the San Francisco premiere of Fences, a night hosted by the city’s former mayor, Willie Brown, the star already had racked up a stellar week: Golden Globe and SAG Awards nominations for him and for the film, which he produced and directed, and sitting strong on Oscar prediction lists. But the event had Washington — arguably the most handsome man ever to play the Pittsburgh garbageman Troy Maxson — thinking back to nearly 40 years ago,
Man of the moment Denzal Washington and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at the Fences premiere in San Franciso.
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The film’s star, director and producer joked about unsubstantiated reports that he
was a Trump supporter at the event hosted by the city’s former mayor, Willie Brown, and attended by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.
Hollywood Reporter
As Denzel Washington stepped onto the red carpet for the San Francisco premiere of Fences, a night hosted by the city’s former mayor, Willie Brown, the star already had racked up a stellar week: Golden Globe and SAG Awards nominations for him and for the film, which he produced and directed, and sitting strong on Oscar prediction lists. But the event had Washington — arguably the most handsome man ever to play the Pittsburgh garbageman Troy Maxson — thinking back to nearly 40 years ago, when he was a MFA theater student working across this very San Francisco street at a cafeteria called Salmagundi’s.
“I was the soup guy!” he gleefully told reporters lined up in the tent in front of the Curran Theatre. “I never got to go into the theater: I couldn’t afford the show.” Washington continued the tale at the panel discussion after the screening to a packed crowd that included House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Tom Waits. “I said one day, I’m gonna be in that theater,” he recalled. “It took me 39 years, but I’m here.”
Washington told the crowd he decided to keep the Broadway cast intact, calling up Stephen McKinley Henderson, Mykelti Williamson and Tony-award winning Viola Davis. Fences joins an Oscar contender lineup including Moonlight and Hidden Figures that has put several black stars in serious contention after two years of #OscarsSoWhite snubs, though the actors deferred questions about their chances.
But the film, released on Christmas Day and having started limited screenings in New York and Los Angeles Thursday, also comes at a fraught racial moment for the country, as the first black president is packing up to pass the White House to a white man whose platform was seen by many as a rebuke to racial progress and pluralism.
THR asked Washington what his character Troy Maxson — embittered from having his life’s opportunities limited by racism — would make of a President Obama. “You know what Troy would have said?” Washington answered, using his gruff Maxson voice: “Obama ain’t nobody! I could be president right now! Oh, there ain’t nothing to it! You know just get two or three cabinet members, and tell ’em what to do!”
THR also asked Washington about a story citing him as a Trump supporter on Facebook — one of the big fake news stories proliferating on the social network during election season, to which Washington quipped: “What’s that song back in the day? You heard it through the grapevine! Believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. And a tenth of what you read.”
Washington stayed on the red carpet chumming with reporters long enough that Brown came back out to announce he was already done with his pre-screening introduction. At the film’s conclusion, the audience applauded and hooted through the credits (a highly unscientific study puts the loudest hoots for Viola Davis). Washington added one last sentimental gesture before exiting the stage.
“I didn’t get the chance to do it when I worked across the street, but I’ll do it now.” He took a deep, arms-flaying-out-behind-him, showman’s bow.
