Denzel Washington revealed in a recent interview that his famous “whipping scene” in the movie “Glory” made the actor who was accused of whipping him hesitant to do the job.
Washington, 69, spoke about this scene in a 1999 interview with “60 Minutes.” An audio recording of the interview was included on Tuesday's episode of “60 Minutes: A Second Look,” a podcast produced by CBS News that takes listeners into the “60 Minutes” vault.
The episode focused on Washington, titled “The Gladiator of Acting” (Washington stars in Gladiator II, which hits theaters Friday), pulls excerpts from three interviews Washington has done with the show over the past 25 years.
In Washington's first interview on “60 Minutes,” he talked about “Glory,” Edward Zwick's 1989 Civil War drama about the first all-black regiment in the U.S. Army, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. In the film, Washington played a runaway slave, Silas's Own Journey, opposite Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman and Cary Elwes.
Speaking with 60 Minutes host Ed Bradley, Washington revealed how he prepared for the scene in which his character is flogged for going AWOL to find shoes for other black soldiers.
“Basically what I did was I got down on my knees and kind of communicated with the spirits of those who had been enslaved — who had been whipped. When I got out, I was in charge,” he told Bradley.
I said: Tripp was in charge. So I said, “If this is what you think, if this is what you guys want to do, if this is what you call yourselves, then go for it.”
From actor John Finn, who played Sergeant Mulcahy, the character who flogs Tripp, Washington recalled Finn's hateful reaction to his marching orders.
“The man who was flogging me didn’t want to hit me,” the star said in the “60 Minutes” interview. “I said, 'Come on, do it.'
Washington also remembered Matthew Broderick, who played the regiment's commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, struggling during the scene.
“My focus remained on Matthew, I even remember him nodding [down]I said, 'Don't lower your head,'” Washington shared. Broderick's character was the character in the film who ordered the flogging.
“You know you want to whip me, bring it,” Washington added. “That's what came to me, and that's what I played.”
Washington won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for the film. In his acceptance speech, the “Gladiator II” star paid tribute to the 54th Regiment, “the black soldiers who helped make this country free.”
He won his second Academy Award in 2002 for Best Actor for his role in the film “Training Day.”
The actor also discussed filming the scene in a 1989 New York Times profile.
“Flogging is a very basic nightmare in American history, but it was harder for others than it was for me,” he said at the time. “They realized that was the way it was. I had made them sick. The man who was whipping comforted me – I had to say to him, 'You really seem to be doing it!'
In 2016, Zwick revealed the advice he gave Finn when he cracked a whip at Washington: “Just don't stop.”
The scene has continued to make an impact over the years. In 2019, Michael B. Jordan Washington said his scars in the movie “Glory” inspired his character in the movie “Black Panther.”
