Denzel Washington’s wife is speaking out against his recent Tonys snub.
Pauletta Washington, who has been married to the Malcolm X star since 1983, reacted to her husband’s absence from the theater awards’ Best Leading Actor in a Play category in an interview with PEOPLE.
“Now see, that’s not something you want to ask me,” said when asked about the snub, laughing. “I can’t say that I was surprised that they didn’t.”
Washington went on to explain that her family — which also includes Tenet star John David Washington and The Piano Lesson director Malcolm Washington — is accustomed to being shut out from awards shows.
“In my family we’ve been through this a lot of times. A lot of times,” Washington said. “And I think I can speak honestly and truthfully and artistically that it was denied, you know, so you wonder why.”
She continued, “But we don’t have to wonder why: It’s narrow-minded people that are in charge of making decisions and judgments.”
Washington also suggested that Othello‘s runaway financial success — with ticket prices skyrocketing as high as $900 — turned Tony voters off of the project, which failed to land a single nomination. “That’s the bottom line,” she said. “And that’s a part of it. And you know that.”
The Tonys ultimately nominated George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck), Cole Escola, (Oh, Mary!), Jon Michael Hill (Purpose) Daniel Dae Kim (Yellow Face), Harry Lennix (Purpose), and Louis McCartney (Stranger Things: The First Shadow) in the Best Leading Actor in a Play category.
Julieta Cervantes
Moly Osborne and Denzel Washington in ‘Othello’ on Broadway
Denzel Washington previously won the Tony for Best Leading Actor in a Play in 2010 for Fences, and was nominated in the same category in 2018 for The Iceman Cometh.
Washington also missed the cut at this year’s Oscars, where he was expected by many to earn a nomination for his supporting work in Gladiator II. The Oscars nominated Yura Borisov (Anora), Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown), Guy Pearce (The Brutalist), Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice), and eventual winner Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain) for Best Supporting Actor.
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In his review of Othello, Entertainment Weekly‘s Dalton Ross praised Washington’s performance as William Shakespeare’s titular tragic military commander. “Washington’s vocal cadence has always been something akin to jazz — altering pace, inflection, and volume to keep other characters (and audience members) off balance,” he wrote. “Those mannerisms expand here alongside Othello’s increasing jealousy as Iago’s deception begins to take hold. Watching the always dynamic actor yell, ‘Blood! Blood! Blood!’ in a bitter rage is as impactful as you would imagine.”
However, Ross also criticized the production’s “half-hearted attempt to renovate” the play’s setting. “While Shakespeare is traditionally staged minimally, Derek McLane’s sparse scenic design of a few columns that move around in between scenes reflects a lack of commitment to the bit,” he opined. “And outside of a random case of Bud Light that appears at one point, there really is no era-change emphasis whatsoever. The result puts the production in something of a modernization no man’s land — neither then, nor now.”
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