John David Washington had to learn to do everything backwards for his latest role in director Christopher Nolan’s ambitious Tenet.
The BlackKklansman star reveals Nolan instructed his stunt team to create fight scenes in reverse while calling on his cast to learn to speak backwards.
“I had to learn how to blink, walk, talk, fight, run, block, punch backwards and forwards…,” the former professional sportsman tells Good Morning America. “It was a great challenge for me having a football background, being able to unlearn what I’m used to doing.
“We were sort of discovering these moves together with the stunt coordinators… It was a great experience. It was taxing on the body but it was worth it for sure.”
But learning to speak in reverse was a real head-scratcher and Washington turned to an app for help.
“You speak a line or a word into the app and it says it backwards to you and you learn how to say that…,” he adds. “Some of the best work I’ve ever seen from an actor came from Kenneth Branagh – he was also saying his lines backwards but with a Russian accent… It was insane.”
