Denzel Washington is one of the most esteemed African-American actors and is very respected in the film industry. However, he is also highly respected by rappers, including Drake, who met him as a child.
In an interview on the morning TV show Good Morning America, while celebrating the Boys and Girls Club’s 5,000th location, as the organisation’s national spokesperson, Washington reflected on all the children he has met along the way.
Explaining how the organisation changed his life as a child, Washington explained, “I’m still that six-year-old wide-eyed kid who’s curious about life. I was being taught about grace, about winning with grace and losing with grace, and being a leader and all of these things.”
The Equaliser actor then recalled his visit to a site in Toronto. Reflecting on the trip, Washington explained, “I met a kid in Toronto who came up and was fascinated because I was this star, and he wanted to talk to me, and he couldn’t believe that he met me.”
However, he then revealed that the unnamed kid was Drake, stating, “Well, 10, 15 years later, he came up and he said, ‘You don’t remember when you met me.’ I said, ‘No.’ His name is Drake, and he said, ‘What I said to him he never forgot.'”
However, Drake (real name Aubrey Graham) most likely meant what he said, as in 2017, the Toronto emcee unveiled to the world his tattoo of Washington. The portrait was of Washington’s fictional jazz trumpeter character, Bleek Gilliam, from Spike Lee’s 1990 movie Mo’ Better Blues.
During an appearance on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, Washington reacted to the photo, exclaiming, “Now you got me wondering where is that [on his body]! That’s crazy. But I think he got some other people he admires.”
You can hear Denzel Washington tell the story of meeting Drake in the video below.
