‘I’m thinking this is it – my pulse will cease’: Ryan Reynolds recalls Denzel Washington gaffe during Safe House

‘For a minute, he looked like a Christmas ornament,’ Reynolds said of the incident, in which he managed to give his co-star two black eyes

Ryan Reynolds has recalled the time he accidentally headbutted his co-star Denzel Washington while filming the 2012 film Safe House.

During a sit-down chat with David Letterman for the TV host’s new Netflix series, My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman, the 45-year-old actor recalled a scene in the action thriller where he was supposed to “smash” Washington in the face.

Reynolds told Letterman that on the second day of shooting in Cape Town, South Africa, he and Washington were filming a fight scene “in an out of control car” where he was supposed to “smash” his co-star in “the face.”

“There’s a scene in the movie where he (Washington) crawls through the trunk in the back and he grabs me and chokes me. We were really driving a car at top speed,” Reynolds said, adding that no stuntmen were being used at the time.

“He and I are in this out-of-control car and my corner of my head – I felt it hit his eye so hard I was sure that it split wide open,” the Red Notice star recalled, as he assumed he’d be fired from the set for hitting Washington.

“I’m thinking I’m going to be sent home via crematorium, like, this is it, not only my career but my actual pulse will cease,” he joked, before revealing that Washington was very calm about the situation and said he was “OK”.

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“He was fine, he was like, ‘Hey, accidents happen. Let’s do it again and we’ll shoot it from the other side so we can keep shooting so you don’t see this,’” Reynolds said.

In the second shot, Reynolds said that he ended up hitting Washington again in the other eyeball.

“We did it again, and I got the other eye, Dave,” Reynolds told Letterman. “For a minute, he looked like a Christmas ornament.”