John David Washington is praising Christopher Nolan for challenging the status quo with “Tenet.”
Washington, who now stars in critically acclaimed feature “The Piano Lesson,” told Deadline that co-leading Nolan’s 2020 feature alongside Robert Pattinson was “shaking up” Hollywood at the time. Washington made history as the first Black lead in a Nolan film at the time.
“I think what was so brilliant, which is one of the reasons I know Nolan is a real one, is because he didn’t sensationalize it. He didn’t say we’re on the precipice of history or anything like that. He just said, ‘He’s a man. He’s the protagonist. I know who I picked,’ and I think that kind of thinking was what I was very excited about,” Washington said. “Now, of course, I thought about it because first, I’m in a Nolan film and yeah there’s a Black dude with a beard on the cover. He’s never done that before, so it was rock and roll, man.”
Washington continued, “He was shaking up the industry with that hire to me. I was very aware of it and didn’t take that kind of responsibility lightly.”
And while the HBO Max streaming release of “Tenet” led to Nolan parting ways with Warner Bros. and collaborating instead with Universal, Washington also lamented how his own acting career has been plagued by botched releases.
“[My career is in] a weird place indeed, particularly with ‘Tenet’ coming out during the pandemic,” Washington said. “Another big sci-fi film [‘The Creator’] I did came out last year during the SAG strike. I didn’t feel like I got to market it the way I’m marketing this [‘The Piano Lesson’]. ‘Malcolm & Marie’ was an interesting film when it was released by Netflix, but because of the same things, we didn’t get to market it. So I’m not sure where I am in my career, according to the industry, to be honest.”
He added, “But I get reminded how audiences see me when I’m on the subway and people say they connected with something or if I’m in the airport and someone says they love my work. But it’s hard to know where I am. Maybe that’s partly why I also wanted to do this because I’m not sure how I’m perceived in this industry. I mean, there’s negativity all the time. You check the comment section and you’ll find something that’ll hurt your feelings. So I try not to look at it that way. It’s more about what can I do next to help me understand well, at least this filmmaker or this story found me, so this is the kind of actor they think I am.”
Meanwhile, Nolan’s upcoming 13th feature marks a “Tenet” reunion between the director and actor Pattinson.
And Washington isn’t the only one crediting Nolan’s casting choices for helping his career: Anne Hathaway previously called Nolan an “angel” for casting her in “Interstellar” amid the rise of “Hathahate.” Hathaway told Vanity Fair that Nolan, with whom she had previously worked together on “The Dark Knight Rises,” saved her career with the feature.
“A lot of people wouldn’t give me roles because they were so concerned about how toxic my identity had become online,” Hathaway said. “I had an angel in Christopher Nolan, who did not care about that and gave me one of the most beautiful roles I’ve had in one of the best films that I’ve been a part of. I don’t know if he knew that he was backing me at the time, but it had that effect. And my career did not lose momentum the way it could have if he hadn’t backed me.”
