Video: Stars Walk the Red Carpet at OTHELLO Opening Night

I've never been to the opening of a Broadway play, let alone Shakespeare, let alone starring my godson and Denzel

And so, for me, it's just, I'm giddy. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhall are opening tonight in Kenny Leon's new production of Othello, and we're here with the first-nighters

You go first, you're living with it. We are so excited. It's been like, I think the biggest day of the..

year. It's going to be. So I think we're all together. It's the best part of it. We get

to be with family and friends. So our hearts are full, yeah

Well, I'm from California. I'm rarely in New York City. I'm never at the opening of a

Broadway play. I've never been to the opening of a Broadway play

let alone Shakespeare, let alone starring my god's son and Denzel. And so, for me

it's just, I'm giddy. I'm a little giddy. And, you know, sort of Hamish, too

I'm, like, proud. I've known him since he was a boy. And I've watched him become a man

And then I'm going to watch him elevate the art form tonight on stage

And I already know. I already know, but I don't know. You know what I mean

Like I, Yago is one of the great characters ever written. And I get to watch someone at the sort of peak of this

their artistic integrity take it on in a big effing way Denzo Washington is a master of this craft He a dear friend and my brother and I can wait to support him tonight truly

Yeah, and Jake. Jake is a good guy. Oh, this is great

I mean, I'm back home. I'm in the theater tonight to get to watch the goat

to the greatest of all time, Mr. Denzel Washington. So I'm super excited. And to get to support Kenny Leon, but I've worked with twice now

and did Shakespeare with much to do about nothing in the park. So I'm really excited about seeing what they put together today

No, it's exciting because you have something that's, I mean, Broadway's been around since really since the 1800s

So whenever you can kind of infuse new energy, new joy, new interest in this medium of theater, but theater on this level

Broadway said a whole different thing. And I have to mention my boy, a friend of mine, Neil Bledsoe is in the play tonight, too

So I'm excited for him his Broadway debut. You know what? I think this is great. You know, bringing Jake and Denzel in, and it's a whole new generation coming to Broadway

We need that. It's fresh blood. It's fresh. It's fresh dreams. So this is everything that we need

I'm loving it. I am so, so excited. First of all, if Denzel is in anything

he can read the phone book. I'm coming. So I'm thrilled. It's really, I mean

just one of the classic Shakespeare plays of all time to be able to see him doing this

is just going to be thrilling. And Jake Gyllenhaal, I mean, it's just a great cast

I think that as we become more consumed with our devices, and it's important that we have this continuum of literature

that we reach back to that reminds us of our potential And I think that that what Shakespeare does You know the average person has a 6 vocabulary Shakespeare was I think 24 26

And so we can expand on that. And I think that's what these plays do

They ask you to expand your range of language and imagination. And if we're all just like doing half-hour sitcom

which are wonderful, it limits our range. And I think that that's what I love

I also love the fact that I can do something that somebody else did 400 years ago

There's something about being a part of that continuum that feels special to me. Every time someone reinterprets a piece

and especially something as tried and true and tested as Shakespeare, it's always something fresh and new

That's the beauty of live theater. So I can't wait to see. I've heard a few things

I'm not going to spoiler alert, but I've heard a few things about, the time period, the setting, you know, where they've set it, I'm just so curious to see how the

themes of this show resonate, okay, right now. It's so interesting that this was written hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and Mr. Shakespeare

could have written this yesterday. Yeah, the past is prologue, my friend. The past is prologue, for sure

What I love about this show is there's a younger audience coming to this show that has never experienced

theater before, like we all did, but we first started out. What that means to you as an artist

Everything because we need to get out of the house and support art you know away from our couches And it fantastic that you know streaming services provide so much material for all of us to see But you know we tribal We human beings that need to be around each other and need to

uplift each other. And that's what Broadway does, you know. And so it's just really heartwarming

to see the excitement over this one play. It's really amazing. You've worked with Kenny Leon numerous

times with the director. What's it like collaborating with him on a project

Oh, Kenny is an amazing collaborator and, you know, so respectful, warm

We did Raisin in the Sun on Broadway. We also did The Wiz Live for NBC, you know, and had a ball with that

So, you know, Kenny is, you know, he's a king. He's, you know, he is top, you know, and, you know, I always love working with him

You know what's great about this show, it's introducing a whole new younger audience, not only to the theater, but to Shakespeare and what that means to as artists

us, young people like us. It's great. It's great to keep having younger

people come to the theater, and that's why it's so important, I think, to reinvent Shakespeare

and bring him back in different ways in ways that are more

more, what's the word, relevant. That's exactly the word. I married her

To the Times. And to see where they're going with it, right? You have to embrace it. It's theirs

It's all of ours. Shakespeare's for everybody, and they're for artists for everybody. And what do

they want to say through? What do they, messages, are they that we don't even see yet. And that's what's exciting about all of this

as we look to a new theater and our voices coming forward with just different perspectives

The more, the better. The more the better