About

Denzel Washington's Cringe Face refers to the reaction GIF of American actor Denzel Washington awkwardly chuckling in response to a joke made by fellow actor and comedian Jamie Foxx on stage during the 73rd Golden Globe Awards ceremony in late January 2016.

Origin

On January 10th, 2016, American actor and comedian Jamie Foxx made an onstage appearance at the 2016 Golden Globes ceremony to present the Best Original Score award, alongside his co-presenter English actress Lily James of Downton Abbey. As they began unsealing the envelope to name the winner, Foxx intentionally announced Straight Outta Compton as the recipeint of the award, shortly before retracting his statement with an apology as a playful roast of the gaffe originally made by Steve Harvey at the 2015 Miss Universe pageant (shown below).

"I'm sorry, folks. I've made a mistake. It's right here on the card. I take full responsibility."

The camera then quickly switched its angle to capture the reactions of several celebrity guests in the audience, including Denzel Washington, who initially grinned at Foxx's shout-out to his goatee beard, though his smile quickly faded as the joke took an unexpected turn at the expense of Steve Harvey's now-notorious faux pas (shown below).

Spread

Within seconds of Jamie Foxx's awkward joke going live on-air, viewers at home quickly began pointing out Denzel Washington's ambivalent reaction as a memeworthy moment on Twitter^[1][2], instantly spawning a series of humorous tweets written in the style of the "my face when…" and "that moment when…" memes. By the time the ceremony was over, several entertainment news sites, including US Weekly^[3], BuzzFeed^[4], GQ Magazine^[5] and Complex^[6], had already published articles highlighting the short-lived moment with an animated GIF version of Washington's reaction.

Examples

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External References