For decades, Don Rickles built one of the most dangerous reputations in American entertainment. He could walk onto a stage, look directly at a movie star, a politician, a fellow comedian or an unsuspecting audience member, and turn them into the evening’s punchline before they had even realized what was happening. Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson, Bob Hope, Clint Eastwood, Robert De Niro, Martin Scorsese and countless other celebrities all experienced the famous Rickles treatment. The larger the celebrity, the more satisfying the target seemed to be. Yet one modern Hollywood star has become attached to a particularly intriguing story: Denzel Washington, the Oscar-winning actor whose serious, controlled public image seemed almost designed to challenge a comedian like Rickles.
The headline practically writes itself: Don Rickles hated him more than anyone. Rickles supposedly could not break Washington’s composure, supposedly became frustrated by the actor’s refusal to react, and supposedly developed an unusual resentment toward the man who would not play along. It sounds like exactly the kind of Hollywood story Rickles himself would have loved. There is only one problem. The documented evidence tells a very different story.
Rickles did not appear to hate Denzel Washington. In fact, when he later talked about their famous encounter, he described it with amusement and said that Washington was a fan. The two had barely met before the appearance that became memorable precisely because Washington decided to remain seated when Rickles came out. Rather than producing a private feud, the encounter produced exactly what Rickles had spent his career trying to create: an unpredictable moment in which a celebrity willingly entered his comic world.
The real story, however, is still fascinating. It reveals why Rickles became so successful, why his insults were rarely what they appeared to be, and why a man famous for pretending to hate everyone was actually surrounded by some of Hollywood’s most powerful friendships.
The Man Who Was Supposed to Become a Serious Actor
Don Rickles was born Donald Jay Rickles on May 8, 1926, in Queens, New York. His father, Max, was an insurance salesman and a Lithuanian immigrant, while his mother encouraged his instinct for humor. Rickles did not initially set out to become the world’s most famous insult comic. His first ambition was acting.
After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Rickles attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He studied alongside future stars and initially imagined himself building a conventional acting career. The idea was Broadway, dramatic roles and perhaps eventually Hollywood.
But conventional acting did not immediately provide the opportunities he wanted.
Rickles began performing stand-up and discovered that his personality was more valuable than any traditional leading-man persona. He was not a classic handsome star. He did not possess the smooth, polished stage presence associated with many performers of his generation. Instead, he had an aggressive delivery, an unmistakable face and an extraordinary ability to improvise.
Then came the accident that changed everything.
Rickles was performing in clubs when he discovered that spontaneous insults could generate reactions far more powerful than rehearsed jokes. Rather than treating hecklers as interruptions, he treated them as opportunities. Rather than waiting for the audience to give him material, he created material from the audience itself.
That eventually became his entire career.
As Rickles later explained, the “insult” was less important than the attitude behind it. He preferred to describe what he did as exaggeration and an attitude rather than simply insult comedy.
That distinction was crucial.
Rickles wasn’t simply telling people they were ugly, stupid or annoying.
He was creating a relationship with them.
Frank Sinatra Changed His Life
The moment that transformed Rickles from struggling nightclub performer into a celebrity favorite involved one of the most powerful men in American entertainment.
Frank Sinatra walked into a nightclub while Rickles was performing in 1957. Instead of becoming intimidated by the famous singer, Rickles immediately attacked him with jokes.
One of the most famous exchanges involved Sinatra’s recent film The Pride and the Passion. Rickles joked about the movie and then told Sinatra to make himself at home and hit somebody. Sinatra laughed.
That reaction changed Rickles’s career.
Sinatra could have ignored the comedian.
Instead, he embraced him.
The singer began bringing other celebrities to Rickles’s performances, effectively turning the comedian into a kind of court jester for Hollywood’s elite. Rickles could say things to famous people that most others would never dare say. And because those celebrities understood the rules, the insult became a sign of acceptance rather than rejection.
This became one of the central contradictions of Rickles’s career.
The comedian appeared to despise the people he was insulting.
In reality, many of those people were his friends.
The Secret Was That Rickles Usually Wanted You to Laugh
That distinction becomes particularly important when examining the Denzel Washington story.
Rickles understood something that many imitators never learned: an insult only works if the person receiving it understands the game.
His favorite targets were often people he respected.
Frank Sinatra was not an enemy.
Johnny Carson was not an enemy.
Bob Hope was not an enemy.
Robert De Niro was not an enemy.
Martin Scorsese was not an enemy.
Clint Eastwood was not an enemy.
They were performers participating in a shared theatrical ritual.
PBS’s biography of Rickles makes the point explicitly: beneath the sharp barbs was affection for many of the people he appeared to be attacking. Rickles himself explained that if he genuinely meant the insults, the performance would not be funny.
That is why the word “hate” is so misleading when applied to Rickles.
He could sound furious.
He could appear personally offended.
He could tell someone they were terrible.
He could make an audience believe that he had just discovered a new enemy.
And then he could hug the same person backstage.
That was the act.
Then Came Denzel Washington
By the 2000s, Denzel Washington was one of the most respected actors in America.
He had built a career very different from the celebrity comedians Rickles had traditionally targeted. Washington was associated with dramatic performances, intense characters and an unusually controlled public persona.
That made him an intriguing target.
Rickles appeared with Washington on The Late Show with David Letterman in January 2008. The clip remains one of the most revealing examples of Rickles interacting with a younger generation of Hollywood stars. Letterman’s own channel later republished the encounter under the description “Mr. Warmth meets Mr. Washington.”
The moment was memorable because Washington did something unusual.
He stayed in his chair.
Rickles entered, and instead of behaving like a nervous celebrity waiting to be attacked, Washington remained relaxed. The encounter quickly became a comic exchange between two performers with very different styles.
For anyone unfamiliar with Rickles’s method, this might have looked like a confrontation.
It wasn’t.
It was improvisation.
And Rickles later explained exactly what happened.
In an interview with JDate, he said he had only met Washington briefly before the Letterman appearance. He discovered that Washington was a fan and had decided to stay in the chair when Rickles came out. Rickles said the interaction became funny from there, and he thought the result was funny too.
That single interview destroys much of the mythology surrounding the supposed feud.
Rickles did not describe Washington as someone he couldn’t stand.
He described him as a fan.
Why the “Rickles Hated Denzel” Story Sounds So Convincing
So why does the story work so well?
Because Denzel Washington was almost the perfect person to place opposite Don Rickles.
Washington’s public persona is controlled.
Rickles’s persona was chaotic.
Washington’s acting style often relied on restraint.
Rickles’s comedy depended on excess.
Washington could stare without saying anything and create tension.
Rickles could say ten insults in thirty seconds and create even more.
Put those personalities together and audiences naturally expect sparks.
But the apparent contrast was actually the entertainment.
Rickles needed someone who could withstand the attack.
Washington was more than capable of doing that.
And once the audience recognized that neither man was genuinely angry, the whole exchange became more enjoyable.
This is one of the great misconceptions about old-school roast comedy: people sometimes assume the comedian’s target must be genuinely humiliated.
The best targets were often the opposite.
They were confident enough to absorb the attack.
Rickles Had Already Proven He Could Break the Seriousest Actors
Denzel Washington was hardly the first serious actor to become a Rickles target.
While filming Casino in 1995, Rickles worked with Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese. De Niro was famous for his intense working methods and reputation as a serious actor. Rickles responded exactly as he always did.
He mocked him.
Rickles later told the story of looking at De Niro and telling him he could not work with him because he could not act. The absurdity was obvious. De Niro was a two-time Oscar winner by that point.
The joke worked because everyone involved understood the absurdity.
According to contemporary recollections, De Niro found it hilarious rather than offensive.
Rickles also mocked Scorsese.
He insulted Clint Eastwood.
He attacked Johnny Carson.
He mocked Bob Hope.
He even insulted presidents.
No one was supposed to be safe.
That was the point.
The “Mr. Warmth” Contradiction
Johnny Carson famously gave Rickles the nickname “Mr. Warmth,” which sounds almost completely incompatible with the comedian’s public personality.
It was also perfect.
Rickles’s greatest trick was convincing people that cruelty was his personality while simultaneously making himself beloved.
His friends understood this.
Bob Newhart was one of his closest friends and repeatedly spoke about him with enormous affection. The Washington Post described Rickles as a beloved figure among celebrities who knew him personally, despite the apparent hostility of his stage act.
That contradiction explains why Rickles could get away with jokes that would destroy another performer.
People knew there was affection underneath.
There was another reason too.
Rickles was willing to make himself the target.
He was not presenting himself as morally superior to everyone in the room. He was the loudmouth, the bully, the ridiculous man with the microphone.
His insults frequently came back around to himself.
That made the performance feel less like an attack and more like controlled chaos.
What Rickles Really Thought About Hollywood Stars
Rickles had a particular fascination with celebrity.
He understood hierarchy.
He understood that Hollywood depended on status.
And he understood that comedy could temporarily reverse that hierarchy.
A movie star might walk into the room worth tens of millions of dollars, with an Oscar, a famous family and a career spanning decades.
Then Rickles would point at him and call him an idiot.
For a few minutes, the hierarchy disappeared.
That was the thrill.
As Rickles once explained, the bigger the person, the more pleasure he took in knocking them down a notch.
It was not necessarily hatred.
It was democracy through ridicule.
Everyone could be reduced.
The president could be reduced.
The movie star could be reduced.
The billionaire could be reduced.
The comedian could be reduced.
And Rickles himself could be reduced.
Why Denzel Was Actually a Perfect Rickles Target
There is another reason the Washington story has survived.
Denzel represented the kind of celebrity Rickles loved to challenge: enormously successful, respected and apparently difficult to embarrass.
Rickles’s comedy depended on reaction.
If someone became angry, that was funny.
If someone laughed, that was funny.
If someone looked confused, that was funny.
If someone tried to fight back, that was even better.
But if someone simply sat there calmly?
Rickles had to work harder.
That did not necessarily frustrate him.
It gave him material.
The comedian had spent his entire career turning resistance into comedy. A target who did not react in the expected way was not necessarily an enemy.
He was a challenge.
And Rickles loved challenges.
The Real Feuds Were Rarely What the Headlines Suggest
One of the reasons sensational Rickles stories can be misleading is that his entire career blurred the line between real emotion and performance.
A modern headline might describe one of his jokes as a savage attack.
But the historical context changes everything.
Rickles was expected to insult people.
People attended specifically to be insulted.
Celebrities often sought him out.
Hollywood stars sat in his audience knowing that they might become the night’s main target.
PBS described this phenomenon clearly, noting that celebrities flocked to his performances to become the targets of his spontaneous insults.
That makes a claim like “Rickles hated Denzel Washington more than anyone” difficult to sustain.
If anything, the available evidence points in the opposite direction.
Denzel was participating in the tradition.
Rickles recognized him as a fan.
And the resulting exchange became memorable because the two performers understood what they were doing.
The Man Behind the Venom
Outside the stage, Rickles was widely remembered as warm and generous.
That contrast became one of the defining features of his legacy.
When he died on April 6, 2017, at the age of 90, tributes poured in from across Hollywood. His death was reported as resulting from kidney failure at his home in Los Angeles.
The reactions were revealing.
People did not remember him simply as the angry comedian who insulted everybody.
They remembered a friend.
A mentor.
A colleague.
A performer who had made people laugh for more than half a century.
A man who could say something outrageous to your face and then apparently be one of the kindest people you had ever met.
The nickname “Mr. Warmth” suddenly made more sense.
Rickles and the Generation That Followed
Rickles’s influence extended far beyond his own era.
His rapid-fire insults and fearless approach influenced later comedians who understood that the comedian did not always need a traditional joke structure. Sometimes the comedian needed only an attitude and a target.
His work helped shape the culture of celebrity roast comedy.
Modern performers inherited the idea that famous people could voluntarily surrender their dignity for entertainment.
But there was a difference between Rickles and many of his successors.
Rickles came from an era in which improvisation was everything.
He could walk into a room without knowing exactly what he was going to say and build the routine from what he saw.
That made his encounters unpredictable.
It also made them difficult to reproduce.
You could imitate the insults.
You could not easily imitate the instinct.
So Did Don Rickles Really Hate Denzel Washington?
The answer, based on the available evidence, is no.
There is no reliable documentation showing that Rickles harbored a special hatred for Denzel Washington.
There is no established record of a secret feud, a long-running grudge or a private campaign against the actor.
Quite the opposite.
Rickles himself described their encounter positively. He said that he had only briefly met Washington before the Letterman appearance and discovered that Washington was a fan. Washington’s decision to remain in his chair became part of the comedy rather than the beginning of a personal conflict.
And that may actually be a better story.
Because the real lesson of the encounter is not that Rickles finally met one man he could not stand.
It is that Rickles met a celebrity who understood the game.
Washington did not need to fight Rickles.
He did not need to become offended.
He did not need to prove that he was tougher.
He simply sat there.
And Rickles did what he always did.
He turned the situation into comedy.
The Final Joke Was Always on the Audience
Don Rickles spent his career convincing audiences that he was furious.
But the deeper joke was that he was usually in control.
He knew when to push.
He knew when to stop.
He knew which celebrities could take it.
And he knew that the most powerful people in the room could become vulnerable the moment everyone started laughing.
That was his genius.
The Rickles persona was built around hostility, but his career was built around trust.
People trusted him enough to become targets.
Celebrities trusted him enough to sit in the front row.
Friends trusted him enough to let him attack them publicly.
And audiences trusted him enough to understand that the venom was part of the performance.
Denzel Washington did not expose some hidden hatred inside Don Rickles.
Instead, he exposed something far more interesting.
He showed that the man who made a career out of making celebrities uncomfortable could recognize when someone understood the joke.
Rickles saw a serious actor who could sit still while the storm came toward him.
And rather than becoming angry, he played.
That is what made Don Rickles different.
He could make it look personal without necessarily making it personal.
He could make hatred look like affection.
He could make affection look like hatred.
And he could insult a room full of people while somehow making almost everyone in that room feel like they were his friend.
That is why the legend has survived.
Not because Don Rickles truly hated everyone.
But because he understood exactly how much people loved being insulted by him.