Samuel L. Jackson Talks Marvel, Racists Like Trump, and His FBI Threat
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He is the most prolific actor of his generation and his films have grossed close to $30 billion, making him one of the highest-grossing actors ever. He is Quentin Tarantino’s muse, and has worked with everyone from Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg to Spike Lee and Paul Thomas Anderson. He’s fought Stormtroopers, supervillains, and King Kong. And, after 11 appearances as Marvel’s one-eyed superhero-wrangling spymaster over 15 years, Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is finally getting his own standalone project.
The seemingly ageless 74-year-old will reprise his role as Fury in Secret Invasion, a Disney+ series premiering June 21st wherein he assembles an elite team to stop the villainous Skrulls from conquering Earth. Jackson is joined in the show by an all-star supporting cast, including Ben Mendelsohn, Cobie Smulders, Martin Freeman, Emilia Clarke, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Don Cheadle, and Olivia Colman. He’ll next appear as Fury in The Marvels, a supercharged Captain Marvel sequel starring Brie Larson and hitting theaters in November, and is currently in Atlanta filming the August Wilson adaptation The Piano Lesson opposite John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, and Ray Fisher for Netflix.
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In a wide-ranging discussion, Samuel L. Jackson spoke with Rolling Stone about the ongoing writers’ strike, artificial intelligence, getting threatened by the FBI, and Donald Trump.
The big news in Hollywood is the writers’ strike. How do you feel about it?
I mean, the writers deserve to be paid — and deserve to be paid fairly. That doesn’t seem to be the case. Let’s see if they can get some equity.
The SAG strike is looming as well. Tom Hanks recently discussed his fears about AI, and how the studios may produce work featuring you after you’ve passed.
People just started worrying about that? I asked about that a long time ago. The first time I got scanned for George Lucas [for The Phantom Menace] I was like, “What’s this for?” George and I are good friends so we kind of had a laugh about it because I thought he was doing it because he had all those old guys in Episode I, and if something happened to them, he still wanted to put ‘em in the movie. Ever since I’ve been in the Marvel Universe, every time you change costumes in a Marvel movie, they scan you. Ever since I did Captain Marvel, and they did the Lola project where they de-aged me and everything else, it’s like, “Well, I guess they can do this anytime they want to do it if they really want to!” It could be something to worry about. Future actors should do what I always do when I get a contract and it has the words “in perpetuity” and “known and unknown” on it: I cross that shit out. It’s my way of saying, “No, I do not approve of this.”
What music moves you the most?
There’s some music of my youth that I still listen to. I like rock music — I was sort of a hippie during the Sixties — and in the Seventies, when I was in Atlanta, there was this Black rock band called Mother’s Finest. They played at Alex Cooley’s Electric Ballroom. I listen to a lot of modern hip-hop also. Sometimes I’ll turn on some spatial DJ on Apple Music to hear whatever’s out there now. I’m pretty open to everything except country. [Laughs] The personal hip-hop music is very interesting to me. Back when Juice WRLD was alive, I listened to that. The kid was having some issues, but the music was still good. I remember asking my daughter and her friends who their Stevie Wonder was, and they said, “Usher.” They didn’t say Beyoncé. They said Usher.
Let’s talk Secret Invasion. Had you been pushing Marvel to give Nick Fury his own project for a while?
I actually have not. My biggest concern with Marvel was trying to keep them from killing me more than anything else. [Laughs] I kind of liked the gig! When they called me in to tell me what’s going on, I always thought they were trying to kill me. They didn’t let me go to Wakanda, which I was kind of upset about. How could Nick Fury not know about Wakanda? They said, “Well, you do know but you can’t go.” I always wanted to tell the story about who Nick was before he had these superhero friends — when he lived in the shadow world as a spy, and how he connected with these people. Secret Invasion is not a superhero movie. It’s gritty and dark.
When you first popped up as Nick Fury in Iron Man, did you have any idea you’d be playing him for 15-plus years?
They told me they were giving me a 9-picture deal, and at the time, making nine pictures would’ve taken almost 10, 12 years. I had no idea that it would happen that quickly. I’ve been grateful for the work and the character. I’ve been fortunate to fall into some franchise things over the years, from Jurassic Park to Star Wars to this.
Was that a good 9-picture deal for you, or a bad Scottie Pippen-type deal? Did they lock you in at a low rate or do you feel you’ve been fairly compensated?
Every deal was negotiable. [Laughs] Every movie was a negotiated deal. It wasn’t like, “You do one movie and the next one will be X more dollars.” It was better than that. It’s been equitable in terms of what it’s been and how it’s played out. But there are things I wish I’d been in that I wasn’t in, like Civil War. If the kids are fighting, why isn’t Nick Fury there to send them to their rooms? They never explained that to me.
You’re going to be in The Marvels with Brie Larson, and you two are good pals. She got so much hate for playing Captain Marvel from the more sexist side of Marvel’s fanbase. What was it like to see her go through that?
Brie’s a stronger person than people give her credit for. We had done Kong together, which was not the most wonderful experience for either of us. We became great friends during that particular experience because we were having such a hard time. Then, when she was doing her movie [Unicorn Store] and trying to get a particular actor, I was in the makeup trailer with her and was like, “Why are you trying to hire this other actor and not trying to get me to do your movie?” She said, “I didn’t think you’d ever do it… so, will you?” And I was like, “Let’s do it.” Then, we bonded through the election while we were doing her movie when Donald Trump won. She was broken and I was like, “Don’t let ‘em break you. You have to be strong now.” Then, when she got Captain Marvel, she called me and was like, “They want me in the Marvel Universe. Should I do it?” And I was like, “Hell yeah! Let’s do it!” But she’s not going to let any of that stuff destroy her. These incel dudes who hate strong women, or the fact that she’s a feminist who has an opinion and expressed it? Everybody wants people to be who they want them to be. She is who she is, and she’s genuinely that.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
The same thing I told my daughter. She asked me, “How do you choose a career?” And I told her, “You choose something that makes you want to get up every day and go do it.” I didn’t realize that until I fell back into the theater in college. I wasn’t particularly enthused about where I was headed or where the world was going, but then I took a public speaking course and ended up in The Threepenny Opera. In doing that play, I found a place that gave me joy and gave me purpose. All of a sudden, that was where I wanted to be every day — not hanging out with my dudes drinking, smoking weed, and chilling between classes. I wanted to be in the theater every day and create with these amazing, wonderful people.
You were an usher at the funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. What was that like for you, and how far do you feel we’ve come since then?
[Laughs] I was an usher because the funeral was held at Morehouse College. I was a student, and they asked students to help people find their way through the campus and to their seats at the funeral. The day after Dr. King got killed, they brought his body to Spelman and he was laid in the chapel over there. Robert Culp and Bill Cosby rented a plane and took about 100 or so students from Spelman and Morehouse and Clark to Memphis to march with the garbagemen, and then we came back and the funeral was the next day. So, I volunteered to do all that.
The world seems to be in as hard a place as it’s always been. As a child of the Sixties, watching what happened at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and seeing the police beating those demonstrators — and those were young white kids — I learned there’s a certain kind of thing that the powers that be don’t want us doing. One of them is protesting what they think they want us to do. So, when George Floyd happened, it was great to see all the different faces of kids out there fighting the injustice and what the power was doing once again to keep you from having an open mind or keep you from creating change that is not the change they want made. That part has not changed. In my opinion, it’s kind of worse. They used to hide it. Now, they don’t hide it anymore! When I grew up in segregation, I knew which white people didn’t want to be bothered with me and I knew how they felt about me. I know how the Republicans feel about me now because of what my mindset is. When I see Trump, I see the same rednecks I saw when I was growing up who called me “n*****” and tried to keep me in my place. That’s what the Republican Party is to me. They’re doing it to young people, gay people. They don’t care who you are. If you’re not them, you’re the enemy.
I read a story about you getting involved with Stokely Carmichael and the Black Power movement in the Seventies, and the FBI confronted your mother and intimidated her into getting you out of that group.
They told my mother something bad was going to happen to me if she didn’t get me out of Atlanta in the summer of ’69. I’d already decided that I was going to be an actor at that point. I wasn’t out of the Revolution, but I wasn’t going to be the political animal that I had been. I was ready to do something else. The FBI knocked on the door and talked to her face to face in Tennessee, so she came from Chattanooga to Atlanta, took me to lunch to talk to me, and then drove me to the airport, got me a ticket, and said, “Get on the plane. Do not get off the plane till you get to L.A., and I’ll tell you why.” So, I did. And she told me why. And I went to L.A. and became something else.
Do you feel like you’re taken for granted because you’re such a consistently great actor?
I’m not a statue-chaser. I’m a guy who likes to be challenged, but sometimes it’s fun to go make a movie with your friends and have a good time. It’s like going out on the street and playing with your friends, saying, “Let’s play cowboy.” I see films that I wish I could be in. I’m still trying to find a Korean film that I could do because they make such great films. I saw Sisu the other night. Have you seen that one? That was dope. I like crazy movies like that.
When I was a kid, I really wanted you to win the Oscar for Pulp Fiction. And I remember being angry when you didn’t.
I might be the only person in the history of those boxes that they have up when they’re calling the winner who actually said, “Shit.” When they said “Martin Landau,” I was like, “Aw shit.” Now, there was no reason for me to expect to win because every award show up to that point I had lost to Martin Landau. But who the fuck saw Ed Wood? That’s neither here nor there at this point. The moment they’re about to call your name you think, “Maybe they’re gonna get it right this time.” [Laughs]
Tarantino said his 10th and final film will be The Movie Critic. Are you in it?
I don’t know. I hope so! That would be nice. But I wasn’t in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, so who the fuck knows. The last time I saw Quentin was when I got my Oscar last year. I was shocked he came to the ceremony! He’s in Israel enjoying being a dad, so that’s great. But hopefully I’m still on his muse list and he’ll write something for a brother to do. That’d be good! I always like doing his stuff.
What was it like working with Olivia Colman on Secret Invasion?
Amazing! So amazing. I walked in the room that morning when we were supposed to shoot our first scene together. I looked at her, she looked at me, and we both burst out laughing. It was just, “OH MY GOD!?!” It was so great. Emilia Clarke was amazing. Ben [Mendelsohn] has got chops that are out of this world. And, as many Marvel movies as Don [Cheadle] and I have been in, I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation until Secret Invasion. And I’ve known Don forever! We never had a moment onscreen that was meaningful together until this particular thing. I had an amazing time doing stuff with people I truly admire and watch. I even went to work when I wasn’t working just to watch Martin Freeman because I wished I was in the scene with him.
I read that you developed a stutter when you were younger, and to get through it you swore.
Yeah. It was the Porky Pig syndrome: “Ba-dee, a-dee, a-dee, fuck!” Then you’d say the word. “Ba-dee, a-dee, a-dee, motherfucker!” Then I could say it. But I had a really bad stutter. Explosive shit. There are a bunch of us. Me, Bruce Willis, Emily Blunt. There’s a gang of us.
Did that help you become such a brilliant curser?
Who’s a brilliant curser? Me? [Laughs] Well, I have very good interpretive skills. I can fit words together and make them sound really nice — even when they’re not.
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