Talk:The Emperor Jones

Latest comment: 3 years ago by 2600:1700:DC50:5560:34E3:1BB7:A892:6589 in topic Denzel Washington Played the Lead in The Emperor Jones in His First Acting Role

Denzel Washington Played the Lead in The Emperor Jones in His First Acting Role edit

Here's an interesting piece of information that I just learned about: Denzel Washington had his first onstage role playing the lead in The Emperor Jones" at Fordham University in 1975.

As an undergraduate at Fordham College at Rose Hill during the 1970s, he played basketball and considered a career in medicine before shifting to journalism. During his junior year, however, he transferred to Fordham College at Lincoln Center, where he found his calling on stage in the theatre program.

“I bluffed my way into my first [college acting] job,” Washington told Merv Griffin in 1985, eight years after earning his Fordham degree. “They were doing Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, and I was up for the leading role in the first play I had ever done. … I got good feedback right away, which was very important, and I said, ‘Oh, this is what I’m supposed to do.’”[1]

Here's another quote from Washington:

“You know, my first role on stage, when I was a student at Fordham, was in The Emperor Jones,” he recently told the Times. “I’ve always loved O’Neill. And here I am, 40 years later, coming back to him in Iceman.”[2]

I will leave it to others to decide how to incorporate this information into the main article.

2600:1700:DC50:5560:34E3:1BB7:A892:6589 (talk) 03:38, 30 August 2020 (UTC)Reply

References edit