Denzel Washington, Corey Hawkins, and Alex Hassell on creating Joel Coen's 'Macbeth'
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — Director/writer Joel Coen's adaptation of William Shakespeare's "The Tragedy of Macbeth" might have been my favorite film that I saw in 2021. My mother introduced me to Shakespeare early in my life. I was fond of "Richard II" and was more than happy to tolerate "The Comedy of Errors," "Romeo and Juliet," or "Twelfth Night." But it was Shakespeare's plays with supernatural aspects like the ghost in "Hamlet," the fairies in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," or the magic in "The Tempest." Most of all, I loved the witches in "The Tragedy of Macbeth." Why? That's just the kind of kid I was. The kind of the person I am.
So, that's where I started when talking with Denzel Washington, an actor that I've loved since seeing him in 1989's Civil War drama "Glory." Was I nervous? Of course I was. I'm nervous about getting out of the bed in the morning. And yet, Washington is not an intimating presence. He's thoughtful and forgiving. I'd like to talk about his adaptation of August Wilson's "Fences," or stay a little closer to the topic ask him to contrast working with Kenneth Branagh on 1993's "Much Ado About Nothing" to this experience with working with Joel Coen.
With Corey Hawkins, an actor I first noticed in 2015's "Straight Outta Compton" (he played Dr. Dre), the conversation begins in a strange place as I inform Hawkins that my favorite cat from when I was a teenager was named Macduff. Hawkins plays Macduff. Not the cat, obviously, but the character that my family admired so much that we named our snaggletoothed pet after him. Sometimes my questions are nearly as good as the answers Hawkins gives.
However, my conversation with Alex Hassell, who plays an expanded version of the character of Ross, displays my Shakespeare geekery as we dive into how Hassell's version on Ross is noticeably different from the traditional version that audiences might be expecting.
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