Tenet Star John David Washington Learned Every Movement Backwards

Tenet is a cinematic marvel as visionary director Christopher Nolan made sure to spare no creative expensive when shooting the time bending thrill ride practically. This means, as some elements of the film are moving in reverse, they really had to operate backwards on the films set while others near them moved in a traditional manner. The film’s Protagonist portrayed by John David Washington is forced to operate in both directions of time which called for the actor to learn several movements which felt anything but natural. Surprisingly, the simple things which we might not think about turned out to be the most difficult.

“Blinking,” is what Washington tells ComicBook.com might have been the most difficult physical action to do backwards. “I mean, believe it or not the blinking, I got a couple of notes on my blinking when we were in inverted world. And then obviously just the throws and the knowing how to catch a punch and evade a punch backwards. The defensive moves became the attack moves, the attack moves become defensive moves. So that concept as a whole just took a while to get a hold of and grasp.”

The film as whole, really, took a lot for the cast to grasp, as well. Audiences will be wrapping there head around Tenet in theaters this weekend but there is certainly going to be some thought-provoking threads steering their conversation as they head home.

“It was very important, that’s why communication was essential,” Washington said of understanding the script and production. “It was so necessary, daily to track where [the Protagonist] was emotionally, where his mental state was at every scene as we traveled through the journey of the Protagonist. What I saw, a genre like this, a film like this is so ambitious, because we’re dealing with the spy element, we’re dealing with action thriller, some drama in there, but sci-fi elements… So a lot of times, it’s like you gotta choose one, otherwise you just lose them all. But Christopher Nolan executed it only he could do it the way he knows how.”

The impressive unveiling of the many layers of the film’s complex plot resulted in a five-star review from ComicBook.com.

“What was exciting for me was playing a human being because of what you’re talking about, the discovery of all that,” Washington says. “So that sort of empirical moment at the end, I think I was able to find that because I was playing a human being the entire time that I wasn’t just falling into rules of what a spy is supposed to be. Or what a human being would be? Like it would have been what kind of spy was he? What kind of person was he? And Chris allowed that, he encouraged that. That’s one of the things we talked about early on.”

Are you excited to see Tenet? Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!

Tenet is now playing where theaters are open.