‘When Denzel Washington is on the screen he’s giving his all. That’s what people love’

As a young fellow in Pittsburgh, Antoine Fuqua never imagined he might grow up to become a powerful film director. Why would he? There were no conspicuous signs pointing in that direction.

“Not even close,” Fuqua says. “No. As a kid I played sports and ran around and got into trouble and went to the movies. I loved the movies. The movies were escapism as for all of us. I never thought of myself as a film-maker back then. I didn’t know what that meant.”

Yet Fuqua has, indeed, become among the most influential action directors of his generation. When he first emerged the industry was not particularly welcoming to black film-makers. But he admits to a youthful confidence.

After an opening act in music videos, he made his debut directing the great Hong Kong actor Chow Yun-fat in The Replacement Killers. In 2001 he directed Denzel Washington – a constant force in his career – to an Oscar in Training Day. Shortly after that he landed in Ireland for the mud-splattered, blood-encrusted King Arthur.

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“I love Ireland!” Fuqua says diplomatically.

Did they treat him well when he was shooting the Arthurian epic?

“Fantastic,” he says in characteristically genial fashion.

We meet as Fuqua again unites with his old pal Denzel for more viscera-ripping action. The Equalizer 3, another episode in the reinvention of the 1980s Edward Woodward TV series, finds Washington’s ruthless vigilante cleaning up a picturesque corner of Italy. Is there any of Woodward’s character left, I wonder. Is this a distant, distant cousin?

“I think [it] is a distant, distant cousin,” Fuqua says. “But the idea that they help people who can’t help themselves remains the same.”

So what keeps Washington and Fuqua coming back to one another? This is their fifth collaboration in 22 years. Some sort of bond must have formed.

“We trust each other. We respect each other. We made an agreement on Training Day never to tie each other’s hands. To be creative. To be open to ideas,” Fuqua explains.

“So that allows us to really flourish in our relationship. And obviously we’re friends off camera as well.”

So he must have some insight into why Washington has remained so durable. It has been more than 40 years since the actor made his big-screen debut. He received his first Oscar nomination in 1987 and has remained consistently lauded ever since.

Fuqua doesn’t pause.

“I believe it’s because people know when Denzel Washington is on the screen he’s giving them his all. Whether you enjoy the entire picture or not, you’re going to enjoy him as an artist. I think that’s what people love and respect about him.”

Let’s go back to the beginning again. Fuqua was raised in a working-class corner of Pittsburgh. He was a decent athlete and remembers becoming hooked on films from an early age. His grandmother, a fan of westerns and gangster movies, put him in front of Humphrey Bogart and Jimmy Cagney. He connected with the films of Akira Kurosawa – a lifelong influence – after seeing The Seven Samurai at a local revival house. Fuqua played basketball at the University of West Virginia, where he studied engineering, but he already had an inkling to get behind the camera. I had read that he was shot when he was 15 and that the incident helped focus his mind. That has to have an effect on a young man.

“Realising that you can’t take life for granted,” Fuqua says. “And that death can come unexpectedly – just because you’re running to the store to get macaroni and cheese for your mother. It happens just like that. And your life flashes in front of you.

“So I think the choices I’ve made my whole life – being brave, and not letting fear stop me – that had a lot to do with it. You have no promise for tomorrow.”

I am interested to hear him say that the memory helped nudge fear into the wings. Experienced directors often say that the most important thing is to look and sound confident. You have to walk on to a set with 150 people and seem as if you know what you’re doing.

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“Absolutely, yeah,” Fuqua says. “And you know, when you finish it, you’re going have to talk to you and everyone else” – he’s referring to the media. “Ha ha! It’s for the world. So you have to deal with that as well.

“They say when you pray for rain you’ve got to deal with the mud. It definitely affected my way of thinking. I know there is an ultimate to all of us. But what we do in between is so important. The choices we make, being brave. Don’t let fear stop you from [doing] anything.”

Fuqua was under particular pressure as one of the few black film-makers at the top table. Predecessors such as Gordon Parks, director of Shaft, and Melvin van Peebles, of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, had paved the way in the 1970s. Spike Lee made a mark in art house-adjacent cinema. But what other black film-makers were making high-budget action films at the turn of the century? F Gary Gray was there. Maybe a few others. Did he often find himself the only black man in the room? Has that situation improved markedly?

“Well, for sure, when I started it was different,” Fuqua says. “And being a black director wasn’t in favour. In fact, for Training Day they didn’t know who I was when we went to the Oscars. Bizarre!

“But, you know, Hollywood has changed a bit. They’re trying really hard to be more inclusive of everyone – black men, women as well. My job was always just to do the best job. I think that’s the only way you’re ever going to get the proper response from any business.”

I assume it was hard to ignore him when Training Day hit. Released in 2001, the film cast Ethan Hawke as a younger cop under the tutelage of – as it transpires – Washington’s brutal, corrupt senior officer. The film allowed Fuqua to stretch himself creatively. Shooting on location in Los Angeles, he made a busy nightmare of those dangerous streets. The research was sound. And the acting was, of course, of the highest quality.

Would I be right in saying that swung things around for him?

“Yeah, you’re 100 per cent right,” Fuqua says. “I love storytelling. I came out of music videos and commercials. So it’s hard to get a good character-driven script when you come from that world. They just see you as a shooter – just a visual guy. And so Training Day solidified my storytelling ability, my ability to really work with actors. Denzel got the Academy Award and Ethan got nominated. So it definitely changed the perception of me as a director.”

Fuqua has barely had a break in the intervening decades. Married to the actor Lela Rochon since 1999, he helped raised two children while shooting such hits as Olympus Has Fallen, The Equalizer and the classy remake – reuniting Hawke and Washington – of The Magnificent Seven. Once an outsider, he could now claim to be part of the establishment. Meanwhile the industry changed around him. It could be reasonably argued that it altered more in the past decade than at any time since the advent of sound. What must it be like to be at the centre of that?

“I think there is a deeper appreciation for the process of making a film over the years,” Fuqua says (perhaps surprisingly). “I think Covid cemented some things that people took for granted. I believe that a lot of Hollywood film-makers are locked in a little different now, with our relationship with the audience. When we didn’t have them for a moment it was very scary and sad. So I think there’s a re-evaluating of our job as entertainers directly, to connect with the audience. Even more so now.”

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Maybe. Just look how Barbie and Oppenheimer brought audiences back to the movies. And yet. Streaming offers increasing competition. Many of Fuqua’s contemporaries have moved to the smaller screen. (Does it still make sense to call it television?) He, however, has largely stayed loyal to movies. Can the theatrical experience be preserved?

“I grew up in the cinema,” he says. “I sit there and watch that screen and there’s nothing like it, that feeling of being in a collective group of people from different walks of life, all responding the same. TV – yeah, whatever it’s called now, as you say – serves a great purpose. It’s great entertainment at times. But I don’t think it can ever replace the collective group of people coming together in one place with that giant screen.”

He is positively lyrical now.

“The magic of that can’t be replaced.”

The Equalizer 3 is in cinemas from Wednesday, August 30th