Denzel Washington Shares Story About Meeting Young Drake at Boys & Girls Club

Denzel Washington and Drake go way back.

The actor recently appeared on Good Morning America to celebrate the 5,000th location of the Boys & Girls Club, for which he is the national spokesperson. The 68-year-old also shared an interesting story about his time with the nonprofit organization.

“You just never know who you touch,” Washington said. “I met a kid in Toronto who came up and was fascinated because I was like this star, and he wanted to talk to me, and he couldn’t believe that he met me. Well, 10 or 15 years later, he came up and he said, ‘You don’t remember when you met me.’ I said, ‘No.’ His name is Drake. And he said what I said to him, he never forgot.”

Washington also benefitted from the Boys & Girls Club when he was a kid. “I was that 6-year-old kid that was nervous,” he said. “What am I now? I’m still that 6-year-old, wide-eyed kid who’s curious about life. I was being taught about grace, about winning with grace and losing with grace, and being a leader and all of these things.”

Back in 2017, Drizzy commemorated Washington by getting a tattoo of the two-time Oscar-winner. The ink was specifically from Spike Lee’s 1990 film Mo’ Better Blues, in which Washington played the fictional jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam.

“Now you got me wondering where is that [on his body],” Denzel told Jimmy Fallon at the time when reacting to the tattoo. “That’s crazy. But I think he got some other people he admires.”

Watch the clip of Washington telling his story about Drake up top.