Denzel Washington said actor who whipped him in Glory didnt want to hit me: I said come on, do it

Denzel Washington revealed in a newly-unearthed interview that his infamous “flogging scene” in “Glory” left the actor who was charged with whipping him reluctant to perform the task.Washington, 69, spoke about the scene in a 1999 interview with “60 Minutes.” Audio of the interview was included in Tuesday’s episode of “60 Minutes: A Second Look,” the podcast produced by the CBS news show that takes listeners into the “60 Minutes” vault.Focused on Washington, the episode aptly titled “The Gladiator of Acting,” (Washington stars in “Gladiator II,” which hits theaters Friday), pulls excerpts from three interviews Washington gave the program over the past 25 years.In Washington’s first “60 Minutes” interview, he spoke of “Glory,” Edward Zwick’s 1989 Civil War drama about the first all-Black regiment in the US military, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.In the film, Washington played an escaped slave, Private Silas Trip, opposite Matthew Broderick, Morgan Freeman and Cary Elwes. Talking with late “60 Minutes” broadcaster Ed Bradley, Washington revealed how he prepared for the scene in which his character is flogged because he went AWOL to find shoes for other Black soldiers.“Basically what I did was, got on my knees and sort of communicated with the spirits of those who had been enslaved — who had been whipped.

And when I came out, I was in charge,” he told Bradley. “I said, ‘Trip was in charge.’ I said, ‘If this is what Trip, if this is what you men, if that’s what you call yourselves, want to do to Trip, then come with it.’”Of actor John Finn, who played Sergeant Major Mulcahy, the character who flogs Trip, Washington recalled Finn’s averse reaction to his marching orders. “The guy that was whipping me didn’t want to hit me,” the star said in the “60 Minutes” interview.“I said, ‘Come on, do it.’” Washington also remembered Matthew Broderick, who played the regiment’s c...