Ouch.
Denzel Washington revealed, “I bit my tongue almost half-off a few months ago.”
“It’s affecting my speech. It forces me to slow down. I have to use it,” the 70-year-old actor shared during his Saturday appearance on the New York Times’ “The Interview” podcast.
While the “Gladiator II” star didn’t share more about the injury itself, he admitted it has affected his upcoming role in the Broadway revival of “Othello.”
“I have a line: ‘Whither will you that I go to answer this your charge?’ It’s hard because my tongue is swollen. It has affected everything,” the “Training Day” star explained.
The “Fences” actor — who was baptized and became a licensed minister in December — then tied the incident to his faith, saying it showed him why he should “pray every day.”
“I’m like, ‘OK, Lord, I’m here, I think this is what you wanted me to do.’ Now I’m not sure why [I bit my tongue], but one can say coincidence and serendipity and all those things,” he continued.
The “Book Of Eli” actor then spoke further on how his faith has been a moral compass for him throughout his career.
“At this point, everything I’m doing is through the lens of what God thinks, not what they think. I don’t know what they think,” he said.
“You go down that hole, you’ll never come out of that. When people say, ‘What do you want people to get from this movie?’ or ‘What do you want them to get from this play?’ I always say, ‘It depends upon what they bring to it.’ There’s some interesting themes [in Othello] of jealousy and envy and pain and death.”
“And Kenny [Leon], the brilliant director, he’s putting it in what he calls the near future. So all of those things — jealousy, envy — it takes on a whole new thing with the information age,” Washington continued, affectionately adding that Leon is “nuts.”
“I love him,” he said. “He’s complicated. But he’s already got a handle on it. I’m not worried about that, because I don’t like to learn the lines too soon. I was telling a young actor who asked, ‘Why don’t you like to learn them too soon?’ I said: ‘Because then I’m the voice I’m listening to delivering the cues to myself. I want to hear it from you, and that’s going to affect how I say what I say.’ For me, that works.”
