Thank you. Thank you very much.

I am obviously the most unorganized; everybody else has nice boxes when they’re script up and I just kind of got all my stuff here and put inside of a magazine, so. So in fact, I don’t even have it in the right order, wait a minute. Let me get it in the right order here….

So if it starts like flying around the stage, just run around and grab it for me, bring it back up here for me. I’ll keep going as I can.

President Gutmann; Provost Price; Board Chair Cohen; fellow honorees; beautiful honorees and today’s graduates.

I’m honored and grateful for the invitation today. It’s always been great to be on the Penn campus. I’ve been here before a lot of times for basketball games. My son played at the Palestra, played on the basketball team. Coach didn’t give him enough playing time, but we’ll talk about that later.

No, I’m really pleased with the progress that Coach Allen has made and no, I do. I am, I really am. And I hope him the best success in the future.

I’d always get a warm welcome when I come to Pennsylvania, when I come to Philadelphia — except on the few occasions when I’d wear my Yankees cap.

It’s like taking your life in your hands around it when you wear Yankee cap, I am telling you. I met a couple of guys and they were like: “Hey, we love you Denzel. But you walking around with that hat on…we don’t care who you are.”

So you’ll be happy to see that I’m not wearing my Yankees cap today.

But I am wearing my Yankees socks, my Yankees t-shirt, and my Yankees jock shirts, my Yankee underwear. Not my Yankee cap.

Still, I’ll be honest with you: I’m a little nervous. I am not used to speaking at a graduation of this magnitude, it’s a little overwhelming. This is out of my comfort zone.

Dress me up in army fatigues. Or throw me on top of a moving train, someone said unstoppable or ask me to play Malcolm X, Rubin Hurricane Carter, Alonzo from Training Day: I can do all that.

But a commencement speech? It’s a very serious affair and it’s a different ballgame. There are literally thousands and thousands of people here.

And for those who say— well you’re a movie star, millions of people watch you speak all the time…… Yes, that’s technically true.  But I’m not actually there in the theater — watching them watching me. I think that makes sense.

Youtube video can be seen at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyDo5vFD2R8

Full transcript can be seen at here:

https://singjupost.com/denzel-washingtons-famous-fall-forward-speech-full-transcript/