Denzel Washington Eying Broadway Return in 2014

Tony Award winning actor Denzel Washington says he will be returning to Broadway in 2014.

The revelation comes during a recent interview on Charlie Rose.

“What I want to do is come back to Broadway,” Washington said on the show, “which I plan to do in 2014. [Producer] Scott Rudin and Kenny Leon, who directed me in “Fences,” we’re all trying to figure out which play to do. I won’t say which play; they’ve already got their mind made up, but 2014.”

Washington was on the program to promote his new movie “Flight,” but he said that his greatest love is for the theater.

“I love theater the most,” he said. “I like acting on stage more than film because there is an energy you get from it.”

Washington won a Tony Award in 2010 for his role in the revival of “Fences,” and he also had appeared on Broadway in “Julius Caesar” and “Checkmates.” His Off Broadway resume includes roles in “The Tragedy of Richard III,” “A Soldier’s Play” and “Coriolanus.”

A blog on IndieWire.com speculates that the new role for Washington could be in a new version of “Othello” alongside Al Pacino. There has been no official word of this pairing, however.

The blog cites a profile of Washington from earlier this year that states that the actor is “showing no signs of slowing down, with talk of him starring in ‘Othello’ with Al Pacino.”

This is not the first time Pacino and Washington have been tied to the Shakespearean tragedy – Pacino spoke about playing Iago in the play to the New York Times back in 2010.

“I once talked to Denzel Washington about doing Othello,” he said at the time. “I turned down Iago in the past because I thought there was a banality to Iago. Time has passed, and I have read the play again and again and found a way in… Now I want to do it.”