Samuel L. Jackson Claims A Deleted ‘A Time To Kill’ Scene Cost Him An Oscar
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Warning: The following article contains triggering language related to sexual assault, abuse, and rape.
Samuel L. Jackson revealed that he lost out on an Oscar after a scene was deleted from the 1996 drama, A Time To Kill. During a recent interview with Vulture, the acclaimed actor spoke about his career and detailed how shocked he was to learn that Joel Schumacher-directed film underwent multiple editing sessions.
He surmised that this scene could’ve been the one to score him a coveted gold trophy, but he had an idea why they cut it. Jackson, 74, alleged that it “was one of the first times that I saw that sh*t happen.”
“The things they took out kept me from getting an Oscar. Really, motherf**kers? You just took that sh*t from me?” he asked. “My first day working on that film, I did a speech in a room with an actor, and the whole f**king set was in tears when I finished. I was like, ‘Okay. I’m on the right page.‘ That sh*t is not in the movie! And I know why it’s not. Because it wasn’t my movie, and they weren’t trying to make me a star.”
He continued, “There are things that I’ve done in other movies where I said, ‘Wait a minute. Why did you take that moment out of the movie?’ Because the moment, in that movie, it’s bigger than the movie.”
The Washington, D.C. native also expressed that due to the movie’s edits, it may have caused his character’s perception and perspective to be altered as a result. Samuel L. Jackson plays Carl Lee Hailey in the film, a man who shoots the racist men who sexually assaulted and raped his daughter as they prepared for trial.
“When I kill those guys, I kill them because my daughter needs to know that those guys are not on the planet anymore and they will never hurt her again — that I will do anything to protect her. That’s how I played that character throughout. There were specific things we shot, things I did to make sure that she understood that, but in the editing process, they got taken out,” the outspoken legend continued. “And it looked like I killed those dudes and then planned every move to make sure that I was going to get away with it. When I saw it, I was sitting there like, ‘What the f**k?’“
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