Josh Brolin has opened up about a tense moment between him and Denzel Washington where the two “almost got into a fight” on the set of Ridley Scott’s 2007 movie “American Gangster.”
Brolin — in an interview with Graham Bensinger published on Wednesday — noted that the two “get along very well now” before recalling the near dust-up on a day when Washington showed up “a little late” to the set.
“There was a whole thing there and then he showed me the lines and he said — he didn’t change any of my lines but he kind of changed the structure of it. He said, ‘I think I’m going to put this down here and I’m going put that up there,’ but he wouldn’t really look at me,” Brolin explained.
Brolin added that he was trying to remember the structure and he didn’t have “that many lines” to memorize.
“And I’m supposed to be super confident. It’s Denzel Washington, man. It’s like not easy. You’re just this actor who they’re trying out, seeing if he’s the real thing or not,” said Brolin, who is currently on a media tour for his new memoir “From Under the Truck.”
He said he forgot a line so he put his hand on Washington’s shoulder in a move that seemingly set the actor off.
“I said, ‘What’s the line?’ and he hit my hand off and he said, ‘Don’t ever fucking put your hand on me.’ And I was like, ’Holy shit, I’m gonna scrap with Denzel Washington. This is crazy,” said Brolin, who played Detective Trupo in a film where Washington starred as drug kingpin Frank Lucas.
He continued, “We’re not actors anymore, at least in my mind. In his mind, he was just doing his job. He was that guy. He was Frank Lucas. Period. But I didn’t know.”
The two would eventually get past the heated moment and asked each other if they were OK before Brolin asked for his line again.
“He said, ‘Go for it.’ It’s like he’d said what he needed to say,” Brolin said of Washington, who has since reunited with Scott on the filmmaker’s latest movie “Gladiator II.”
Brolin has previously credited “American Gangster,” Washington’s highest-grossing movie, for saving him when he was “totally broke.”
The actor, in an appearance on the “Hawk vs Wolf” podcast with Tony Hawk and Jason Ellis, recalled his lawyer calling him and urging him to check his email following the film’s release.
“I looked at it and I was like ‘Thank God.’ I thought it was like $60,000 and it literally saved me even though that was going to be taxed and all that, I’d probably end up with 30 grand, 25 grand after commissions and all that. And it turned out that it wasn’t 60,” said Brolin, who confirmed he was off by one zero.
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“And I fucking started crying.”
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