-What a year you're having, my friend.
-Yeah, it's been nice.
-Spike Lee's "BlacKkKlansman."
You were unbelievable in that. You're getting rave reviews.
-Thank you. -Congrats on that.
Season four of "Ballers," and now --
-Thank you, HBO.
-Yeah, thank you, HBO.
Oh, you get to work with The Rock.
How's Dwayne? How's Dwayne Johnson?
-You know, he's good.
You know, we stay in -- No, I'm just kidding.
We don't stay in touch.
[ Laughter ]
No, he's good, man.
It's great working with him.
He's so humble to be such a mega superstar that he is.
He's just still a man of the people, man.
-I heard the first time you felt like a star was because of him.
-Well, I won't say like a star,
but I felt accepted into the culture of acting.
We were -- So, we were doing the pilot of "Ballers,"
and we weren't sure tonally what it was yet.
So there's this sort of heavy scene.
We were gonna go in. This is our Oscar, Emmy moment.
Let's just go for it. -Yeah.
-You know, we weren't sure we were doing a comedy yet.
So we were going in.
We did the scene, and it felt so authentic and real.
The tears were coming down and all that.
They yelled "Cut," and he says to me,
"Good job, brother. Good job.
Get him some Crystal Light.
We're gonna get you some Crystal Light.
You need to hydrate, brother. Good job."
[ Laughter ]
So I felt like -- I felt like I made it.
And it was custom-made Crystal Light.
It's like the stuff you can't even get in the stores.
They did this whole thing with the --
[ Laughter ]
-Oh, you got all sprinkle.
-I got the -- yeah.
-Special Hollywood sprinkle.
-It was The Rock sprinkle.
-A Rock-sprinkled Crystal Light. -So I felt like I made it.
-Wow, I've never gotten that feeling.
-You never got the Crystal Light before?
-No. -Oh, man.
-Dwayne, if you're watching, where's my Crystal Light moment?
Come on, man. [ Laughter ]
Yeah, I've never -- Maybe I just don't look dehydrated to him.
Yeah, I've never really worked that hard.
-Yeah, there's levels to it, man. You'll get there someday.
[ Laughter ]
-The more I read about you, though,
the more I'm interested in you
because there's things that I go,
"Oh, I didn't know you did that."
I didn't know you played football."
-Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, about 20 pounds ago -- 20 pounds heavier --
I played at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Division II school, Historical Black College.
[ Cheers and applause ] Oh, yeah? Y'all know?
All right, all right. -Wow.
-And then, I played for -- I didn't play for the Rams.
I was employed by the Rams to sit on the bench.
[ Laughter and applause ]
You know, so --
-That's more than any of us --
That's more than any of us can say.
-It was a dream come true to sit on that bench.
-Was it exciting?
I mean, do you have your jersey all framed and everything?
-Oh, definitely. My practice jersey and the fake one.
So, yeah, definitely. [ Laughter ]
Definitely got it framed. No, for real, I do, I do.
-No way. Of course you would. That's a big deal.
-They got Torry Holt walking in the locker room and Isaac Bruce,
and just -- it's just, you know,
it was just amazing just to be a part of that in the locker room.
And then, one of my best friends in life is Steven Jackson,
who was a running back -- the running back there.
So it was a great experience.
-With your background, I mean, your mom is an amazing actor.
-Your dad is an amazing actor. -Thank you. Thank you.
-Did you ever go like, "Maybe I should get into acting."
But I don't know. You got to do your own thing?
-My whole life I wanted to do it.
I saw my father do Shakespeare in the Park
when I was, like, five years old.
My mom -- classically-trained pianist,
can just walk to a piano
and just start playing some Beethoven
without even needing the notes.
-Really?
-So yeah, she was teaching piano lessons at like 11.
You know what I mean?
So I always wanted to do it. I always loved the language.
I loved the process of it.
And my father's ascension, you know,
as he started getting more popular,
I started feeling resentment and just sort of protecting myself
from people acting different and funny and lying to me basically.
So I had this protective shield of football
that I felt like that was my lane of independence.
And so, I've withstood, you know, knee injuries,
broken ribs, a hernia, all in the name of independence.
So, for real. [ Laughter ]
-That's what a kid's got to do, right?
-You know, so that's what I did.
But really, I've never been happier
doing what I'm doing now.
I've come out now.
-But then the best moment. Absolutely.
[ Cheers and applause ] I'm happy you're here.
-Thank you.
-Happy you're doing what you're doing.
-Thank you.
-So you hop out of the subway.
-Oh, yeah.
-And what do you see is a poster for your movie
right next to your dad's poster for his movie.
-Man.
-This was not planned. You can't just do this.
-That was a trip. That's a trip. Yeah.
-How cool is that?
There's -- There's Denzel.
There's you. And you're just like --
-I was, like, standing, like, right here.
But no, like, it was a trip.
I got off -- I take the subway a lot here.
And I got off the train and I saw it.
And I play stuff cool.
I'm like -- I'm trying to be my own man and all that,
but even I was like, "Whoa, this is a trip."
-That's awesome.
-They got the same eyes, those guys.
[ Laughter ]
-That's right, they do. That's right.
Let's talk about your new movie.
It's out this week, "Monsters and Men."
-"Monsters and Men." Yes.
-Ooh, man. That's just another tricky, tricky movie, man.
-It's heavy. It's heavy.
-This is what you did with "BlacKkKlansman," too,
but in a totally different way.
How do you describe "Monsters and Men"?
-Yeah, I mean, it's a contemporary film
about the social narrative of police brutality, really.
And it's a three-person perspective --
the kid who films it,
another kid who has professional baseball aspirations,
and then the African-American police officer,
which we don't too often see in cinema,
the perspective of the African-American police officer.
And what ties them all together
is this mishandling of police work in the neighborhood.
-It was fantastic.
I want to show a clip.
Here's John David Washington in "Monsters and Men."
Take a look at this.
-Yeah, Lisa, what would you do if somebody twice your size
is coming at you?
-He -- -After several warnings?
What would you do?
-He was just standing there, if you remember.
-You don't know that.
Do you know how quickly these things escalate?
-What? He was surrounded by six or eight cops.
-It takes seconds, Lisa.
-He's dead.
-You have no idea.
You don't have a clue what goes on on the streets.
You see three minutes of a shaky video
and you think you know what you do.
One cop's mistake, and now we're all to blame.
[ Cheers and applause ]
-John David Washington, everybody.