john david washington

Born on July 28, 1984, John David Washington is angry at being defined as the son of Denzel Washington, forgetting his mother. “And from Pauletta Washington,” he snapped angrily at a television journalist who had given him this label. “She made a lot more money. Before they got married, she was already working on Broadway. On her first date, she paid the bill and the taxi. She was an excellent pianist straight out of Juilliard. She is a great artist and I have learned a lot from her. My father taught me to hunt, my mother taught me to love.”

Pauletta put her career on hold when she became pregnant by John David, and later dedicated herself one hundred percent to taking care of him and her three subsequent siblings, until recently returning to acting, as one of the regular actresses in the series Nola Darling , created by Spike Lee for Netflix.

With so much talent in the family, it’s no surprise that John David took his first steps as an actor at the age of nine, appearing as a student in a Harlem classroom in the film starring his father , Malcolm X , also by Lee. But he dreamed of dedicating himself to American football, since when he studied at Morehouse College, he was one of the stars of the team. “In my adolescence I became an introverted and rebellious boy, and I discovered that through sports I could express what he carried inside”, he recalls. He played with the Sacramento Mountain Lions, the St. Louis Rams and the Rhein Fire, but it hadn’t been going well for him, due to numerous injuries. “I discovered the tougher face of that sport: I suffered fractures of the meniscus, of the Achilles tendon, in the ribs… Luckily, I am still able to memorize lines of dialogue.”

So he accepted an offer to play precisely a player dedicated to the same sport as him, the competitive Ricky, in the HBO series Ballers , produced by and starring Dwayne Johnson . The fiction triumphed, so John David achieved some popularity, and a nomination for the awards of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, without having made public whose son he was. Only when in 2016 Denzel Washington received the Cecil B. DeMille , honorary award from the Golden Globes, did the boy reveal his secret, when he went on stage with his entire family.

Since the Washingtons have always been very close to the Lees, she wasn’t surprised when she received a phone call from Spike Lee , but was shocked when he told her he had a novel for her to read. “I’ve idolized him since I was a kid,” says John David. “He gave a platform to people of color, both men and women, and he had cast me in the role. I was excited, I couldn’t wait to get started.” Thus he was recruited for Undercover the KkKlansman , where he plays a real character, Ron Stallworth, a Colorado policeman who poses as a white supremacist by phoning members of the clan who had placed an ad in the newspaper soliciting applicants. Despite sharing the screen with a heavyweight, Adam Driver, has succeeded in the challenge, and has achieved a nomination for the Golden Globes. “When the nominations were announced, I was watching it on television with my father. When we found out, we hugged each other for ten minutes.”

For now, he seems to have specialized in police roles, as he repeats as such in another film about racism, Monsters and Men , for which he prepared his role patrolling with real agents. “It was horrible, because the first day I saw a man shot, about to die.” He also dons the uniform in The Old Man & the Gun , where Robert Redford plays an actual mugger.

He is not afraid of the future, as he assures that his father has revealed the formula for success to him. “Never stop studying, you have to be very professional.” She has inherited discretion from him, since no details about his private life have been revealed. It is known that he has not yet been married, and so far he has only been linked to Vivian Nixon, daughter of Debbie Allen , a popular teacher from the Fame series , although it is actually unknown if they are dating, they have only been seen together in several occasions.