Isaiah Washington Speaks His Mind, Laments His Firing to Newsweek
It’s a sunny afternoon in Los Angeles, and Isaiah Washington is on the set of the independent film The Least of These, Newsweek reports.
Isaiah Washington plays a priest in the movie, and he’s dressed in full-on black on black with a sliver of white at his collar.
He greets his guests with a gentle smile and an extended hand. Sitting in his small trailer filled with the scent of myrrh incense, he seems at peace.
Isaiah Washington can’t stop himself from doing what he’s been doing a lot lately: explaining away a situation that already cost him a beloved job - and could ultimately cost him much more.
Last fall, Washington, by his own admission, picked a fight with Patrick Dempsey, one his co-stars on the ABC hospital drama Grey’s Anatomy.
Fighting with a co-worker is never smart, but Washington took it further by using an offensive term to refer to a gay cast member, T.R. Knight, during the altercation.
“Patrick and I had a philosophical disagreement that got out of hand and that I regret a great deal,” Isaiah Washington says.
“I said a lot of negative things that were never reported, but there was one word that caught everyone’s attention, particularly someone who wasn’t even in the room with us. It was a fight between two men that shouldn’t have happened. But someone heard the booming voice of a black man and got really scared and that was the beginning of the end for me. I see that now, but I didn’t then.”
But that’s not the end of the tale.
When the cast was celebrating at the Golden Globes in January, a reporter asked about the altercation, and about Washington’s anti-gay comment. Washington took the mic to defend himself — and used the slur again. Once may have been a slip of the tongue, but twice? The public got angry.
Earlier this month, ABC did not offer Washington a new contract for the show’s fourth season, which begins filming this summer.
Washington has expressed bitterness about the situation, especially since he did everything the network asked to atone for his mistakes.












