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‘I Can Do Things to You With My Voice’

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Think about some of these iconic movie lines: “I’ve had it with these motherfucking snakes on this motherfucking plane!” “What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful!” “And that’s the truth, Ruth.” “Yes, they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!” “Hold on to your butts.” “And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee.” The words are the work of writers. But none of these quotes would have become part of our pop-culture lexicon if it weren’t for Samuel L. Jackson’s authoritative, impassioned delivery.

The 74-year-old actor, probably the most bankable movie star of our time, is a major part of multiple franchises: the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Star Wars universe, the MonsterVerse, the Shaft-verse, the Kingsman-verse, the Unbreakable-verse, the Tarantino-verse. Jackson loves making popcorn flicks. And to hear him talk about Secret Invasion, the new Disney+ Marvel series that follows former Avengers honcho Nick Fury (whom he has been playing since 2008’s Iron Man), it’s clear he has thought long and hard about how to ground the character in something resembling reality, no matter how fantastical the story.

The breadth of Jackson’s screen and stage roles remains astonishing. He was raised in segregated Chattanooga, Tennessee, and started in the business alternating between serious work and pure entertainment. In many ways, he hasn’t really stopped, even as the industry has gone all-in on the kinds of blockbusters he regularly stars in. What comes through from watching him, and talking to him, is his profound love and respect for the craft of acting.

I saw you in The Piano Lesson in October. You were in the original Yale Rep production back in 1987, playing Boy Willie. What was it like to return to this play as Boy Willie’s uncle?Different. First of all, my wife, LaTanya, was directing it. I didn’t have the responsibility of being the engine that runs the play just being a supporting character. I was more or less a moderator, which was fine.

She had seen the original production in which you starred. Was this a project she’d been thinking about for a while?Not to my knowledge. She and Denzel Washington are really close. He had the responsibility of putting all those August Wilson plays on film. His son John David wanted to do a play; Denzel figured that was a good place for him to start. Boy Willie is tough! Especially if you’ve never been onstage before. She did a huge job teaching him stagecraft. I just learned to do like I always do: Take a note; don’t say anything. She gave me one note: DO NOT TALK TO JOHN DAVID ABOUT BOY WILLIE. So I didn’t. She didn’t want me telling him who I thought Boy Willie was so he could form his own character. Because my Boy Willie would be informed by Lloyd Richards’s directing. August was still writing the play when I did it. By the time it got to Broadway, it was very different than the play I did at Yale.

The Long Kiss Goodnight, 1996.Photo: New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett Collection

After Pulp Fiction and Die Hard With a Vengeance, you basically become a household name. But I’ve noticed that you’d still do supporting parts. It didn’t seem like you always had to be the lead. Was it the fact that you had spent so much time getting to that point that you just wanted to keep working? I am a firm believer of that bullshit that they used to tell us, “There are no small parts, only small actors.” I just show up. Sometimes I show up uncredited. Sometimes it’s a favor, or I’m doing it because I actually think that this director is going to do something later and I want to be part of that director’s lexicon. I used to fight all the time with my agents. When I first got to Hollywood, there was a stigma. You don’t do television. You’re a movie star. You don’t do TV. I said, “No. I’m an actor.” “No. You’re a movie star.” I said, “But I want to be on this.” “No. People don’t pay their money to go to the movies to see people they see every day or every week for free.” “The fuck are you talking about? It’s acting.” That didn’t change until like HBO or some shit came along. All of a sudden it’s like, “Well, they’re paying to watch TV now, so you can do some of that.” I said, “I don’t want to be on any of those.”

Fortunately I’ve been in the blockbuster business for a while. I remember I was on some British talk show and they asked me if there were any directors I wanted to work with I hadn’t worked with. I go, “Yeah, George Lucas. I’d love to be in a Star Wars movie.” Then I go off and I’m doing Sphere in Vallejo with Dustin and Sharon Stone and I get a call. “George Lucas would like to meet you. He hears you want to be in his Star Wars movie.” Then George and I became really good friends. He liked my work ethic, he liked the fact I showed up, I hit my marks, I knew my lines, I was nice to everybody, I was cool, I was glad to be there. So now I’m in the Star Wars universe, which is great. Back then, that was the biggest fan base on the planet. I’ve been accosted by the Jedi Council of every city on the planet. “Master Windu, please, let us have a council.” “Get away from my room!” They’re outside in the parking lot, chanting. Jesus, these people are adults. Stop it.

The idea of there not being any small parts — I think some movies have used that aspect of your persona really well, like Deep Blue Sea. You’re one of the bigger names in the cast, so it’s a real surprise when you get eaten so early.I was in that movie way longer than I intended to be. Because Renny [Harlin] told me, “You are going to be the first person to die, which means anybody can die.” I was like, “Okay.” I thought I was going to show up. The shark was going to show up. I was going to get killed in the movie. And next thing I know, I’m soaking wet for a month and a half in Mexico. “What the fuck, man? When am I going to die?”

Renny Harlin had also used you really well in The Long Kiss Goodnight earlier.I read Long Kiss and I kept asking my people to get me in to read for this role. But the studio was like, “No.” “Man, what the fuck?” They wouldn’t see me. And I went to a party somewhere. Renny and Geena Davis were there. I said to Renny, “Hey man, why won’t you let me read for your movie?” He’s like, “Let you read for my movie?” I said, “Yeah. The Long Kiss Goodnight, they won’t let me come in.” He said, “You want be in the movie?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “You’re in the movie.” “The fuck out of here. Really?” And sure enough, next week I was in the movie. I never auditioned, never read, never did anything.

Why didn’t they want you for the movie?Because there was a greater romantic thing happening between Mitch and Charly Baltimore. He literally fucked her in the first script. Or she fucked him. She gets off of that wheel, after killing that dude, and she finds me down in that basement and I’m freezing. In the original script, she strips herself naked and wraps herself around me.

Long Kiss is an awesome movie. And I still love Mitch Hennessy. I’d do a Mitch Hennessy movie in a minute. Maybe the daughter grows up and she wants to know more about her mom and she takes on the whole mantle of who Charly Baltimore was.

Why not? They did another Top Gun.Come find Mitch. Come find Mitch Hennessy!

What are some other films along the way that didn’t get the reception you’d hoped for, that you wish you could get people to watch again?One Eight Seven, for sure. One Eight Seven was a serious subject that got kicked to the curb for some reason. I remember they were trying to get us on Oprah to talk about the plight of teachers in schools. And she was busy promoting Beloved, so she wouldn’t. “I don’t do violence on my shows.” I said, “Bitch, you just killed your goddamn daughter in your own room. The fuck you talking about? Give me a break.” And now prophetically teachers are getting jacked in schools every day. This movie spoke directly to that. People are looking at Eve’s Bayou differently now. And The Caveman’s Valentine is interesting. I don’t know, man. I just do the movies. Shit.

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LaTanya Richardson Jackson is an actress of film and theatre. She and Jackson married on August 18, 1980. In 2014, she played Lena Younger in the broadway production of A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry, alongside Denzel Washington, who played Walter Lee Younger.In 2015, Washington announced he would direct and star in an HBO adaptation of Fences by August Wilson alongside Viola Davis. Both Davis and Washington were in the stage production of Fences in 2010. In addition to Fences, the August Wilson estate arranged for Washington to executive produce the other nine Pulitzer winning plays by August Wilson.Joseph Papp was the director of the New York Shakespeare Festival. He also started the Black-Hispanic Shakespeare company in 1979, which was a repertory group entirely made up of Black and Hispanic actors. The first show they performed was Julius Caesar, which included Morgan Freeman as Casca.Papp also created the Negro Ensemble Company, which formed in 1987 and was comprised entirely of Black actors.The Billie Holiday Theatre is best known for bringing Inacent Black to Broadway in 1981 and bringing up actors, like Jackson, Debbie Allen, Bill Cobbs, and Carol Woods. Smokey Robinson’s first musical, Raisin’ Hell, was also produced at the Billie Holiday Theatre.In 1975, Papp and Bertram Beck, executive director of the Henry Street Settlement, began to develop plays together to be performed first at Henry Street, and then at Lincoln Center or the Public Theater.Frank Silvera performed with groups, like the American Negro Theatre and Joseph Papp’s New York Shakespeare Festival. After Silvera’s death in 1970, a group of actors and playwrights created a writers’ workshop and named it after Silvera.Jackson’s first appearance as Nick Fury, the founder of the Avengers, was in the first Iron Man movie in 2008. He’s appeared more than a dozen MCU productions as Fury, sometimes as a main character and other times in a minor role. Previously, David Hasselhoff played Nick Fury in Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., which was broadcast on Fox in 1998.John Frankenheimer, who passed away in 2002, was known for directing movies like Birdman of Alcatraz and Against the Wall, a 1994 movie starring Jackson as Jamaal.William “Billy” Friedkin is a director, producer, and writer known for directing films such as The Exorcist. In 2000, he directed Rules of Engagement, which starred Jackson as Colonel Terry ChildersIn college, Jackson began to drink heavily and use LSD, marijuana, and cocaine. In 1990, he passed out trying to cook cocaine on the stove and was found by his wife and daughter, who was 8. This drove him to seek help and go to rehab, where he became sober. Jackson says he and Spike Lee were speaking on the phone about Jungle Fever while he was in rehab. In the film, he plays Gator, who is addicted to crack.Fruit of Islam is the security wing of the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist organization headed by Louis Farrakhan.Jackson and Lee have worked together on numerous occasions, including School Daze, Do the Right Thing, Chi-Raq, and Jungle Fever.Albert Hall played Baines, an incarcerated man who helps Malcom X convert to Islam in prison, in Spike Lee’s Malcom X in 1992.“Scale plus 10” is an industry term used to describe the pay rate actors may receive in a film. The scale is a minimum daily or weekly pay rate established by the Screen Actors Guild. The 10 applies to the 10 percent of an actor’s play that goes towards their agent.Jackson is the only American actor to be awarded best supporting actor at the Cannes Film Festival, and one of four actors total. He was awarded for his work as Gator in Jungle Fever in 1991.White Sands is a 1992 film starring Willem Dafoe as New Mexico sheriff Ray Dolezal. He finds a corpse holding a suitcase full of $500,000, which leads Dolezal to FBI agent Greg Meeker, played by Jackson, and wraps Dolezal up in a mess involving the entire military–industrial complex.Harvey Weinstein is a former film producer who in 2017 was accused of sexual abuse and harassment over several decades; many of the victims were actresses.In 1995, Jackson was nominated for best supporting actor at the 67th Annual Academy Awards for his role as Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction. Jackson’s reaction to Martin Landau being awarded for his role as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood in has become an iconic moment because Jackson mouthed “shit” when Wood’s name was called.Jackson was nominated for best lead actor in a play at the Tony Awards in 2023 for his role as Doaker Charles in The Piano Lesson by August Wilson. He held a frown on his face prior to the winner being announced, and when Brandon Uranowitz was awarded Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play for his performance as Nathan/Ludwig in Leopoldstadt, Jackson maintained his frown, which became something of a meme online.Shaw Brothers was a production company that was known for making Kung-Fu movies, like Kid with the Golden Arm.Body mics were first used on Broadway 1964, when a production of Funny Girl made use of the technology. Now, it’s common practice in theatre for actors to have their mics hidden in their wigs, or taped to their heads, ensuring amplified sound and stealthy placement.Jackson has said he was partly raised by his grandparents and aunt, because his mother worked in Washington DC. His aunt enrolled him in speech therapy to help his stutter, and encouraged him to act. She was a performing arts teacher who never had enough boys to cast, and Jackson says she was encouraging of his career in the arts.Jackson attended Morehouse College, a historically Black liberal arts college.Jackson’s mother, Elizabeth Montgomery, was a factory worker, who later became a supplies buyer for a mental institution. Montgomery passed away on October 23, 2012.Stokely Carmichael, who later adopted the name Kwame Ture, was a noteworthy civil rights activist. He was regarded as the “honorary prime minister” of the Black Panther Party and served as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, a group that led sit-ins to protest segregation in the ‘60s. Carmichael was also one of the first freedom riders and also advocated for voting rights. He passed away in 1998 from prostate cancer.Rap Brown, who eventually adopted the name Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, was Carmichael’s successor as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He is currently in prison, serving a life sentence, for shooting two cops in Georgia in 2000, killing one.After Martin Luther King Jr., who attended Morehouse College, was assassinated, Jackson was amongst a group of fellow students at Morehouse College that demanded reforms to the school’s curriculum and leadership. They locked board members in a building for nearly two days in protest, and Jackson was kicked out as a result.Jackson has played Mace Windu, a jedi master, in the Star Wars franchise since 1999, when his character first appeared in The Phantom Menace. He’s appeared in all three of the film’s prequels.The Long Kiss Goodnight is a 1996 film produced by New Line Cinema.