It's been more than six years since Isaiah Washington was unceremoniously dropped from the hit TV series Grey's Anatomy for allegedly insulting co-star T.R. Knight with a derogatory gay slur. Since then, the actor has failed to secure a role as popular as Dr. Preston Burke, his character on the Shonda Rhimes-created medical drama, which is still on the air.
His role in Blue Caprice, as John Allen Muhammad, the D.C. sniper who killed 10 people in 2002 and was executed for those crimes in 2009, might change all that. But according to an interview with Gawker, Washington says he felt the aftereffects of the Grey's scandal for a very long time.
"You go from making $2 million a year to $250,000 a year. It takes years to downsize. Yeah, I was upset. It didn't just hit me. It hit my wife. It hit my three kids. So now I'm upset because I feel like you're hurting my family. Why? I'm asking why and I'm forgiving. As opposed to being upset I'm saying forgiveness: they know not what they do. It wasn't about fighting. What am I defending? This is not the truth."
It was a tricky moment. The context with which he was initially accused of using the word "faggot," was terrible and homophobic. But the firestorm resulting from him merely using the word as a word to explain what he says he didn't do seemed [oversensitive] at best.
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In the interview, Washington also discusses the gay-themed film he's producing, entitled Blackbird, with director Patrik-Ian Polk.
Read more at Gawker.
Jozen Cummings is the author and creator of the popular relationship blog Until I Get Married, which is currently in development for a television series with Warner Bros. He also hosts a weekly podcast with WNYC about Empire called Empire Afterparty, is a contributor at VerySmartBrothas.com and works at Twitter as an editorial curator. Follow him on Twitter.
