Denzel Washington Says Executives Were ‘Not Interested’ in Casting Him in a Rom-Com in the 1990s

Denzel Washington didn’t purposefully avoid the rom-com genre, he just wasn’t offered any romantic lead roles.

The iconic actor said during a newly-unearthed “60 Minutes” interview from 2000 that Black rom-coms were “not big business in Hollywood” at the time. While Washington explained that he was not “bothered” by a lack of casting in the genre for himself, he did admit that executives were probably “not interested” in diverse storytelling.

The unaired and never before heard interview was with Ed Bradley; it is included in the new “60 Minutes” special ode to Washington: “A Second Look — The Gladiator of Acting: Denzel Washington.”

When asked why he has appeared in so few romantic films, Washington said, “I’m not offered any. […] I think that, again, it comes down to business. I think that if it was a love story with myself and a Black woman, it’s not big business in Hollywood, so maybe they’re not interested.”

Host Bradley asked, “Does it bother you with all of your success, artistic, financial, the dollars that you can… command for a role in a film, that you can’t play the romantic lead in a big budget Hollywood movie?”

Washington responded, “No. It doesn’t bother me. I wouldn’t— I don’t have to, I don’t need to.”

And on the subject, Washington does not love the term “sex scenes.” He prefers to call them “love scenes.”

“I don’t know what a sex scene is,” Washington said. “I have done [them] in ‘Mississippi Masala’ [in 1991] and even in ‘He Got Game’ [in 1998]. That was more of a sex scene, I guess. But, you know, again, I go back to less is more. I mean, people take their clothes off for nothing nowadays. I’m still old fashioned in that regard. I think there should be something left to the imagination.”

Now, 24 years after the “60 Minutes” interview, Washington’s “peck” with another man made headlines for being cut from “Gladiator II.” While being far from a love scene, Washington told Gayety that executives “got chicken” about including the scene.

“I actually kissed a man in the film but they took it out, they cut it, I think they got chicken,” Washington said. “I kissed a guy full on the lips and I guess they weren’t ready for that yet. I killed him about five minutes later.”

Washington clarified to Variety that it was merely a “peck,” saying, “I kissed him on his hands, I gave him a peck and I killed him.”

Washington summed up, “They’re making more of it than it was. […] It really is much ado about nothing.”