Before Denzel Washington took an ER hostage to save his son in John Q, his father didn’t acknowledge him in Carbon Copy. He has come a long way since he was 26 in that 1981 movie.
Ever since Sarah Drew was fired unceremoniously on Grey’s Anatomy, I thought that Ellen Pompeo was somehow responsible for it. Then, when excerpts from Lynette Rice’s book started being published in Entertainment Weekly about the medical drama started to come out, I thought I can’t wait to see what people have to say about Pompeo. It turns out the person who told the worst story about the actress was herself.
Pompeo shared a story about the time 2-time Oscar winner Denzel Washington directed an episode in the 12th season. Meredith Grey was attacked by a patient who left her with a broken jaw. At the end of the episode, the patient apologizes to her, and that is when the trouble began behind the scenes.
“He [the patient] made this choice to speak very softly. And [Meredith] was pissed that [she] had to sit there and listen to this apology, and he wasn’t looking at [her] in the eye,” Pompeo recalled, wavering between talking about herself and the guest star as actors and characters. “Again, we love actors who make choices, right? And I yelled at him, and I was like, ‘Look at me when you apologize. Look at me.’ And that wasn’t in the dialogue, and Denzel went ham on my ass.”
She continued: “He was like, ‘I’m the director. Don’t you tell him what to do.’ And I was like, ‘Listen, motherf‑‑‑er, this is my show. This is my set. Who are you telling?’ Like, ‘You barely know where the bathroom is.’ And I have the utmost respect for him as an actor, as a director, as everything, but like, yo, we went at it one day.”
It is not her show. She is part of an ensemble. The same way ER was not George Clooney’s show, Seinfeld is not Jerry Seinfeld’s show, Everybody Loves Raymond was not Ray Romano’s show, and Two and a Half Men was not Charlie Sheen’s show. The show belongs to the networks and the studios. You are just a face who can be fired or replaced. I bet you ABC could’ve killed her off last season, and it still would’ve gone on.
She thinks she is all that, but what has she done since Grey’s? Nothing. Do you know what she is going to do after Grey’s? Pray that the show remains in syndication so she can get residuals.
She is also going to pray that her co-stars don’t start talking about her like they did Patrick Dempsey. I have a feeling that what they will say will make Katherine Heigl look sweet compared to Pompeo.
After this story started trending on Twitter, I started to think that Rice’s group might put the final nail in Grey’s coffin, as in this might be the final season. I could be wrong. But I feel another show is going to get cancelled because of the Ellen effect. Case in point Ellen, the sitcom, was not Ellen DeGeneres’ show, but Ellen, the talk show, is.
You and I have been calling Denzel Washington, Den-zell for all of these years, and we have been wrong. He revealed to Entertainment Tonight’s Nischelle Turner that it is actually pronounced Den-zull. Why the confusion? Because his dad was the original Den-zull, so his mom started calling him Den-zell “for something different.”
So for all of you parents who named your kid Denzel after the Oscar winner, how are you going to pronounce your child’s name now? And for those of you, who did not name an offspring after him, what will you be calling him from now on? I am a creature to habit, so I will stick with what I know.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EG5d5XEfd8
Before Denzel Washington was one of the greatest boxers in The Hurricane, he couldn’t play basketball in Carbon Copy. He looks the same now as he did when he was 26 in that 1981 movie.
Flight is flying to your televisions this Tuesday and you are going to want to own it so you can watch it on Blu-ray/DVD whenever you want.
Denzel Washington star as “Whip” Whitaker, a pilot with an imperfect life outside of the cockpit and a perfect within it. On a normal flight from Orlando to Atlanta something goes terribly wrong and by some miracle Whip actually stops the plane from a completely deadly crash. Since the plane crashed, the NTBS has to do an investigation and Whip has to hide the fact that he was drinking and doing cocaine before the flight even though it didn’t impair him from landing the plane as safely as he did. His friend and now union rep, Charlie Anderson (Bruce Greenwood) and attorney Hugh Lang (Don Cheadle) are trying to do everything they can to keep him out of jail, but Whip keeps working against them. As his trial date gets closer, Whip learns a lot about himself but is it too little too late? You will have to buy the Academy Award nominated movie on Tuesday to find out.
The Blu-ray comes with the special features: Origins of Flight, The Making of Flight, Anatomy of a Plane Crash, Q&A Highlights. With these special features you will hear the interesting story how John Gatins came up with the idea for the screenplay and how Denzel Washington and Robert Zemeckis got involved with the film. We also learn how they made it and some of the major constraints they had with recreating the flying and airport scenes. I have to honestly say the information in these extras made me appreciate the movie even more.
