To prepare for his role in Training Day, Denzel Washington spent time with real gang members from South Central Los Angeles, as well as “cops who were gangsters.” He explains what he learned through that process and how it shaped his character.
“The original script of Training Day was more like Lethal Weapon. The character wore a plaid shirt and had a lot of empty beer cans in the trunk. But when Antoine [Fuqua] got involved, he brought the whole gangster element to it, working with real Crips and Bloods. We worked with some cops who were gangsters, and they made me understand that you have to be a gangster to deal with gangsters.
So I would pick things from some of the things the cops told me. I said, ‘Well, how do you stay alive in this element?’ He said, ‘Informants.’
I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘They never knew who was telling on each other.’
So that’s the line I used that the cop told me. I walk through a group of gangsters and I say, ‘You better call me.’ And I keep going. Now they’re all looking at each other. ‘What do you mean, call him? You know him?’ Now you set that doubt.
And then a guy named Bone, who was the head of the Athens Park Bloods, gave me a lot of ideas. He’s like, ‘Oh, you’re talking about SHU program.’ I said, ‘SHU program?’ I’m thinking shoe.
He said, ‘No, Special Housing Unit, where it’s 23-hour lockdown.’
The speech I do towards the end of the film, where I ad-libbed ‘King Kong ain’t got nothing on me’—I said to Antoine, ‘If you can, shoot everybody else first, because I’m working out what I’m going to say.’ Like SHU program.
There was another scene: I give Ethan Hawke the PCP, and I’m like, ‘What else you call it?’ They said, ‘Oh, butt naked.’ I said, ‘You call it butt naked?’ Because that’s what you do when you smoke it—you get butt naked.
So I started using it. I would throw in ‘butt naked.’ ‘Oh, you’re gonna get wet.’ They called it getting wet—getting wet, butt naked.
And I’d do, like I said, in the other speech, ‘SHU program, 23-hour lockdown,’ and just kept building it like that.”
🚨 HOLY HELL: Corrupt Clarence Thomas was just caught sneaking out of speaker Mike Johnson’s office.
A Supreme Court justice should not have a private meeting with the speaker of the house.
What were they talking about?
KJP: He just doesn't understand that there's an affordability crisis in this country, and there is, Gas is up, food is up. And this is an opportunity for him to get a win.
He calls it a yawn. And people are suffering out there. This should send a really this should send a message to Republicans in congress. Here's an example that he does not care about their reelection.