Denzel Washington knows all money ain't good money – but he made it all the same

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Denzel Washington knows 'all money ain't good money' – but sometimes you've got to put food on the table.
The tag line for Spike Lee's latest film 'Highest 2 Lowest,' in whichWashington stars as a music mogul caught in a ransom plot on the eve of abig business deal, had the two-time Oscar winner reflecting on past moneyjobs in an interview with CNN.
'My mother used to say, 'Do what you gotta do, so that you can do what youwant to do' – it's not the other way around,' he recalled.
'When we had four children, I was doing stuff I had to do. You go back andlook in the mid-'90s – I won't mention any movies, I'll just say the mid-'90s,around there.'
'A couple (of movies) for the kids?' chimed in Jeffrey Wright, Washington'sco-star.
'More than a couple for the kids – and the wife, and the house, and thebank, and everybody else,' Washington replied.
A quick sweep of his credits around then and you'll find a few duds, sure,but there's also 'Crimson Tide,' 'Philadelphia' and 'The Pelican Brief' (surely he doesn't mean these). And at either end of the '90s, two Spike Lee collaborations, 'He Got Game' (1998) and their masterpiece, 'Malcolm X' (1992). Washington's career has been nothing if not consistently packed with gems. As for his kids, the money jobs paid dividends: John David and Olivia are successful actors, Malcolm a film director, and Katia is a producer.
'Highest 2 Lowest' is Lee and Washington's fifth film together. The actorbrought the script, a reimagining of Akira Kurosawa classic 'High To Low'(1963) – itself based on 1959 novel 'King's Ransom' by Evan Hunter – to the director, for what would be their first collaboration since 2006's 'InsideMan.'
Transposing the story of a Japanese shoe executive to the New York musicbusiness, many of the key elements remain. Washington's record exec DavidKing believes his son has been kidnapped, only to learn the kidnapper(A$AP Rocky) has mistakenly taken the son of his chauffer Paul (JeffreyWright). Should King still pay the ransom, even if it drains his bankaccounts, scuppering plans for him to buy back control of his company?What was a clear-cut decision when he thought it was his own flesh andblood is muddied when it's someone else's child.
Interestingly, there's more than a little of Spike Lee in David. Both arecultural titans at a stage in their careers when they're weighing their legacywith an unquenchable thirst to create. Both are balancing art andcommerce, and the event horizon of tech pulling their industries in newdirections. Both happen to have exquisite personal art collections – in fact,the production made copies of paintings by Jean-Paul Basquiat, TimOkamura and Kehinde Wiley, among others, which really do belong to Lee.
But whereas Lee has embraced his industry's newest players – 'Da 5Bloods' was distributed by Netflix in 2020, and 'Highest 2 Lowest' willdebut on Apple TV+ after A24 distributes theatrically – King is a leerier oftech disruption. He rails at soulless AI-generated music, new artists tryingto gain a following on social media, and his son's Instagram addiction.
'I think we'd all be better off without those addictives in our lives,' offeredWright. 'We were promised harmony; that technology was going to make uswiser, more democratic, more peaceful. That has not been the case. In fact,it's been the opposite. I think it's something we should give some thoughtto: Where are we going with all this?'
Does Washington share any of the same concerns as his character? In aword: no.
'They don't affect me to the degree that they affect the character, because Idon't rely on those things for my happiness or my peace,' he reflected. 'Idon't make money off those kinds of things.'
'I don't need to be known, you know? I like being quiet,' he added.
The acting legend, who was baptized and became a minister at the end of 2024, has entered his zen era, content to reel off aphorisms about fame and filmmaking; taking shots while walking backwards into his own mystique.
'If they see you for free all week, they won't pay for you at the weekend,'he said. It's the same warning he reportedly gave to Michael B. Jordanabout the danger of movie star over-exposure.
So no, don't go looking for him on Instagram, or anywhere else but the big(or small) screen.
'All those so-called Instagram accounts, if my name is connected it, you'vebeen had. You've been took. Hoodwinked. Bamboozled,' he said, gleefully.
'Highest 2 Lowest' is released in US cinemas on August 15 before debuting