br When "This Is Us" star Susan Kelechi Watson was a broke Fine Arts major at Howard University, she received a life-changing phone call. Denzel Washington was going to pay $5,000 for her — and five of her classmates — to study Shakespeare at England’s prestigious University of Oxford. “They didn’t have any minority students, much less [people] from a historically black university,” Watson revealed during a Tuesday, January 22, appearance on Live with Kelly and Ryan. “We went and it changed all of our lives.” Years later, Watson, 36, ran into the the two-time Oscar winner and told him what he had done for her. The Jamaican-American actress is best known for playing strong and protective Beth Pearson on the NBC hit "This Is Us.