He exceeded my expectations: John David Washington on 'Tenet' director Christopher Nolan

"Tenet" star John David Washington is all in praise for Christopher lan as he believed his collaboration with ace filmmaker has helped him improve his own craft. Washington, formerly a professional football player and popular for movies such as Spike Lee's "BlackKklansman" and "Monster", plays main le in lan's new movie.

Billed as a globetrotting game of international espion with a time-bending element at centre, Warner Bros film also features Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapia, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor Johnson and Clemence Poesy. Washington said lan is like a "hero" to him and when opportunity to work with director came up, he didn't hesitate to say yes to it.

"Working with a hero of mine brought me great excitement at prospect, and re was telling what he h in mind for me. And so when I finally got to re script, it is such an incredible, unique, original idea, it got me even more excited about how we’re going to do this—how we’re going to bring this to life.

"And step-by-step we were doing it. Day by day, week by week, we were getting it done, and it was a great experience," 36-year-old actor said in an exclusive transcript shared with PTI by Warner Bros.

Washington hailed lan as "an actor’s director" as he was quite receptive of actor's contributions. "He exceeded my expectations. I can’t speak for everybody else, but in my experience, Chris is an actor’s director. He fully embraced and championed my performance and spontaneity, and my contributions, using my instincts and what I felt like I could bring to table.

"He never wanted things same way. He would say to me sometimes—and it would blow my mind -- 'I’ll work off of you'. If you hear Christopher lan and (cinematographer) Hoyte Van Hoytema say, ', , . You do it, and I’ll work off of you,' that’s something you don’t expect, given ir histories and seeing ir catalogue of films." Washington said he learnt a lot from lan and that will come handy in future.

"Seeing se legends, se people at top of ir game, wanted me to dictate certain things? It was incredible. y gave me great confidence because of moments like that.

"It gave me great joy and a rediscovery of my artistry and what I believe I can do w after something like this. I kw so much more about process of it w and I attribute that to Christopher lan," actor ded.

Washington said "Tenet" was also special because unlike many big-budget sci-fi movies, film didn't rely much on special effects. "As an actor, when you can step into , everything feels alive and in play. And it has to be created that way. "I mean, leer has to create that environment for this to happen, and n, if you’ve done your research and you’re fully invested, it’s up to you to gar those clues, gar those discoveries and put m in soup and make it something unimaginable, something that you can only create when you’re in those situations. And Chris provided that for us," actor said.

Washington is equally in awe of his co-actors.

"It was a dream cast as well. I mean everybody was brilliant. It’s interesting cause everybody has ir own style, right? So sometimes it can take time to just to people’s style and maybe conditions weren’t ideal all time. And having to work through some of se things, body complained, and it was seamless."

"I love way Robert works. Sometimes we wouldn’t overly talk about what we were doing. We discovered things and let elements dictate our attitude, our motivation at time, and I think that worked great," he ded. Warner Bros film is slated to be released in Indian atres on December 4 in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.