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Making is on-screen acting debut back in 1991 with a small role in the western comedy City Slickers, Jake Gyllenhaal has spent decades proving himself as one of the most impressive, talented performers working in film and television today. The guy very clearly knows what he is doing when it comes to being in front of a camera – but his recent experience performing Othello on Broadway with Denzel Washington has been a wholly different experience, and he has very much been wowed watching his co-star do his thing on stage.
Gyllenhaal made his broadway debut in 2015 starring opposite Ruth Wilson in the one act play Constellations, but in a sit down interview with Broadway veteran Audra McDonald published by Variety, he refers to himself as “beginner beyond beginner” in the preparation for playing Iago in Othello – which saw him break from his traditional approach by watching as many performances as he could from previous actors. He told McDonald that his first instinct was actually to turn down the opportunity… but then he realized that he couldn’t:
I spent a year working on it. Kenny [Leon] and Denzel came to me, and I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’ Then I was like, ‘I can’t not do it,’ and was in total panic.
Kenny Leon previously won a Tony Award for a 2014 revival of A Raisin In the Sun starring Denzel Washington – whose Broadway credits go back to 1988 and includes another Shakespeare adaptation: 2005’s Julius Caesar. With the added fact that Iago is a terrifically complicated character to play, it’s understandable that Jake Gyllenhaal would be intimidated, but one also totally understands why he felt compelled to sign on for Othello.
The play debuted last month, and is currently being performed at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, and the Nightcrawler actor has been particularly stunned by Washington’s nimbleness as a performer. He admits to working very differently than his co-star and has been impressed by how he is able to adapt when things don’t go exactly as planned on stage:
One of the millions of things that I’ve learned from Denzel is freedom onstage. When things change and move, or he doesn’t remember, he’s flowing with it. I set boundaries for myself, and he’s just pushing them. It has made me calmer onstage.
Given Denzel Washington’s reputation as one of the greatest actors of all time, it surely wasn’t surprising for Jake Gyllenhaal to recognize that he is a master performer, but it says a lot that it has left a major impression regardless. And the respect has been mutual.
If you plan to be in New York in the coming weeks, tickets to see Othello are currently on sale, with performances scheduled through May into early June. For those of you who won’t be able to attend, you can enjoy Jake Gyllenhaal’s most recent work by catching Road House on Amazon Prime Video and the series Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+. As for Denzel Washington, you can appreciate his turn as Macrinus in Ridley Scott‘s Gladiator II, which is now available to stream with a Paramount+ subscription.