Denzel Washington recently walked through the streets of Chicago and made one elderly woman’s day when he asked her for directions. The woman, Juanita Hubbard, 86, was very excited to see Washington and told him that she just watched his movie John Q last night.
“I can’t believe this. God is so good,” said the woman in the clip. “This is my birthday present. I’m 86. This is my birthday gift.”
Denzel asks her if she knew his aunt who lived up the street but the elderly woman didn’t remember her. The actor was apparently asking for directions to a nearby restaurant named Leon’s Bar Bar B-Q. He also asked someone on her porch about the criminal street gang the Blackstone Rangers, a group some of his Chicago cousins used to make him fight in his younger years, to see if they were still around. One of the men identified himself as a Ranger and Denzel followed it with a joke.
“I’m 62, and I finally got back with the Rangers?” he said.
Someone else introduced the actor to a child who didn’t know who Washington was. They told the actor that they would make him watch one of his movies and Washington said to make sure that he wasn’t shown Training Day. The actor told the group that he was just “regular folk” after they praised him for being a black statesman.
