Actor gets physical
‘Tenet’ star Washington tells of tough stunt training
Even for former professional football player John David Washington, the physical preparation for “Tenet” was rigorous.
Because the mind-bending new movie directed by Christopher Nolan centers on the concept of inverting time to prevent a global disaster, Washington was required to learn intense stunts that made him appear like he was moving backward.
“Having a football background, this rivals my experience physically in what I was asked to do and how I taxed my body,” Washington told the Daily News. “We’re talking about moves that have never been done before, that were created specifically for this movie. A way of thinking. A way of being. Even just your everyday, practical things, like blinking, like breathing, like walking backwards, had to be learned.”
The athlete-turned-actor stars in the high-stakes espionage thriller as the central spy, referred to only as the Protagonist, who must learn to manipulate time as the fate of the world rests in his hands.
Before production for “Tenet” began, Washington — a former running back who signed with the St. Louis Rams in 2006 following a standout football career at Morehouse College — went through an exhaustive twomonth training program to prepare for the film, which is now playing where theaters are open.
Washington, 36, remembers being blown away by Nolan’s vision for the movie, and views the project as much more than a standard spy story or action flick.
“When you read the script, you think, ‘ OK, this could be on par with any of those kinds of genres,’ but then it just gets magically and excitingly disrupted,” Washington said. “We’re in a Nolan genre, make no mistake about it. That’s what, to me, takes it to new heights in the moviegoing experience. I can’t just call it a globe-trotting spy thriller, because that wouldn’t be fair to what everybody did. It’s something much more ambitious than that.”
“Tenet” required Washington to engage in extreme combat sequences and to jump from a towering balcony, despite his fear of heights.
The practical effects of the movie impressed the actor, who said filming a siege of a crowded opera house was among his most exhilarating scenes.
“Having to land on some of those people when I fly from the VIP section was crazy,” Washington recalled. “They were all laughing, like, ‘It’s fine, it’s OK,’ because they were in a Christopher Nolan film, which is the same reason I was like, ‘No, whatever, I’ll almost kill myself. Did we get the shot, Chris? All right, great!’ ”
The actor, whose father is Oscar-winner Denzel Washington, always dreamed of an entertainment career, even as he was pursuing football. Before “Tenet,” he starred on the HBO series “Ballers” and played the lead role in Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman.”
“I loved movies ever since I can remember, loved performance ever since I can remember,” Washington said. “I couldn’t wait to get my chance. I hid that passion, that love for it, deep. As my father started to become more successful and more famous, I just wanted to carve my own name, carve my own lane.
“I loved football as well, and I was pretty good at that,” he said.
“I kept getting promotions, from high school to earning a scholarship to getting signed by the Rams. So I was like, I might as well keep riding this thing out because it keeps working out for me, but knowing I wanted to [pursue acting] the entire time.”