Samuel L. Jackson's Best TDS Moments

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My guest tonight a fine, fine actor whose films include pulp fiction Jackie Brown. His latest is Changing Lanes.

He's walking Samuel L. Jackson.

The name the Google dolls in there with their feet up here, man, my mom would like lose their mind if she saw a guy sitting on sofa with they had their feet up.

I can't do that now. It's true, It's very true.

I just have to inform our viewers the Google dolls did put their feet up on a different show.

Well, I mean, well, yeah, and I was watching that show. Yes, yes, you want to make sure.

And I'm a big fan, and I know that nobody moved the cushions. And my mom wants me to wedd these past twice exactly.

You know.

It's the worstpread about that is when you lifted up the kitchen, she revealed to America, we have it's plywood under there. It's not even like did you see that.

When you looked? I thought that was part of the design. Yes, it is.

When you're on cable, that is part of the design.

But that's designer ply would Come on, who's that guy that uses wood and all his furniture things.

Uh that's uh yeah yeah.

So are you a handy guy? Can you do are you good with like the power tools? If you build stuff? Do you do any of that stuff?

Not anymore? I did for a long time, did you really?

Yeah, because I built sets when I was doing theater. That was one of the jobs that I used to do before I was able to work wherever I felt like wor here. So when I didn't have a theater job, I built sets and I hung lights and I did all this stuff.

So I did it and I.

Made you really know it from the inside out. I mean you paid the dudes doing set design and building stuff.

Set building. I didn't design. I had hammers, nails, drills. Yeah. I like to say I did design in college. But I like to say that I was a hater.

But what I was is the guy in the back who would cut like a thousand tomatoes. So I like to say, yes, catering, I did that.

The other job sort of like that in college. Actually put food on airplanes, you like on the cart while I drove the truck from the kitchens out to the plane and put the food in the shelves and put the things on it.

We eat when we fly.

I would pay to be able to do that. Really, that seems like the coolest job. The guy with the headphones, Yeah, comes down with the We used to race like the other guys from the airlines to the plane, so that whoever whoever.

Got to the liquor cabinet first got the liquor.

This is everyone's fear when they fly, is that that's what's going on, that those guys are racing. I would imagine that that like that, the zamboni like.

A cool job.

You see that, Yeah, you know they'll let you. There's a Zamboni school that you can I'm not kidding around. It's a fantasy camp and you get to go. I saw it when I watched the Now you're looking at me like I'm a crazy man.

No, no, no, no no. I might want to be there.

Yeah, I've always wanted to drive the zamboni, but I'm not a cool weather guy, so I never uh, well neither of mine.

But you know, you're driving the zamboni inside somewhere that's relatively I guess temperate.

And I would assume that there's a heater on the zamboni.

Well that have the heater tape deck you know CD.

Player, they get it tricked out a little bit.

Yeah.

I've actually seen dudes on tractors with like headphones on, like rocking out.

When you're driving down the highway.

Sit dude with a big thing on the front of the think doing the whole wheat thing, and these dudes are rocking out.

There's nothing else to do out there. Those are the guys that worry me because when you're driving through the middle of country and you see the guys on the tractors and you know, they got nothing to think about, you know what I mean, nothing to think about but destruction.

Well, you know some of them may be listening to books on tape. Now I get it out. Nice to see it, Thank you very much. You look well. I'm feeling well, oh yeah, yeah, great.

Just you've been playing a little golf. You've been getting some exercise.

Not a lot of golf. I've been playing, you know, a minimum amount. I had a little back surgery right after Swat went there. Yeah, I had a system my psiatic nerve. So right toward the end of the picture I was in like enormous pain.

I feel like now I have it. I just caught one. I got it really well.

I hope you don't, because, believe me, I never felt anything like that in my life.

Terrible, terrible pain. Yeah, you're scared of going in is this? Have you ever had an operation before?

I had knee surgery way back when I got dragged by the A train back in like nineteen ninety.

So I went stripped over a curb.

Is that right on purpose?

Okay?

Looking up and there you have.

You got dragged by the A train.

Yeah.

Yeah, way back in ninety I was getting off the train. It was like maybe a week before Christmas or something, and the lady in front of me had some shopping bags and they tore something, and I stopped.

I did a very un New York like thing. I stopped to help her, and I helped her. I helped her pick up her stuff.

And apparently I had one foot in the train and one on the platform and the doors closed on my ankle, and I looked up the track and you know I heard that, faithful.

Yeah, the next thing.

End of the train was moving and I'm hopping along. Train built up speed and took off and fortunately I was in the middle of the last car, so I was being dragged along the platform kind of dodging the poles and a backpack on and somebody pulled the emergency cord. The train was a car and half from the tunnel.

Oh my god.

And it wasn't until I.

Got the court like eight months later, a year or so later, that I found out the reason it took so long. The guy, the guy that pulled a cord was on crutches, so he was like crutching his way toward the emergency card online and there was like the people in the door pulling on the door gas were trying to get my shoe off, pushed my foot out the door and making long story short, that wrenched my knee all the way around and ripped everything up on

Yeah, it was all right, that's.

A wild that's I think that's the wildest subway story that I've ever heard from somebody who's still living.

Well, my lawyer well yeah, Well, strangely enough, when my lawyer did the research, I was only one of twenty seven people dragged that year. So it's a pretty common occurrence.

Yeah, we're dragging two people a month here, in the city.

Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, it happens all the time.

Is that why you think the guy crutches this one?

Here we go?

Yeah, right, no one, I got to save somebody else here we go, right that is.

Have you ever been back on the subway?

Yeah? I read subway all the time.

It's a much more efficient way to get where you're going, especially you know, during rush hour or whatever. And plus you know, I read the subway and people don't think it's me. It's kind of like, you know who you look like, he wouldn't be in the subway, right, he'd be on Yeah exactly.

Does anybody ever come up and give you the not like, I'm not gonna blame.

I'm not gonna bust you out, but I know you you.

Know, I know, Yeah, I saw you get dragged done here one night.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Whole yeah exactly. But now does that still bother? I mean the back of the thing when you're playing in golf, because I know you're you're pretty.

Much I'm fully recovered from that, you know, the golf things like totally cool.

Now I've been playing.

I played in South Africa after when I had to wait like eight weeks before I could actually swing again.

Quick.

Do you recuperate pretty faster?

Yeah?

Yeah, I do.

So I did my therapy stuff and I'm still doing therapy. So I'm back playing again. Played in Australia a few weeks ago because I was there finishing Star Wars.

So everywhere you go, you yeah, there's still not done with that film.

Man, there's one more, one more.

One more.

What happens in this one?

Episode three? I'm not going to tell you if you don't know.

Here's here's what I think happened.

What do you think happens?

Yoda loses his virginity.

I don't know if that's is that? Could that happen? Yoda's got Yoda's got kids all over the universe. Yeah, I've heard him say that. Yeah, just if I was getting ready to go in.

I'm standing up about not going to do you.

What's coming out of his trail now this film?

Coach Carter, how are you in terms of the athleticism of uh, you know, the sport of basketball? Are you a player? I know you're a golfer, yeah, but I know your knee is a little jack.

Up playing basketball.

I don't know, maybe ten twelve, years ago when my knee really got jacked up, I couldn't move laterally, so I don't like I don't like getting served.

So only golf now, yeah, because golf.

Is a major sport. I play a little tennis every.

Now and then. Tennis. I don't like running, but I'll do it.

You do like sort of a more stationary version of tennis.

I like playing double so I don't have to run as much.

May I suggest something ping pong?

I got an awesome ping pong game. I really like some ping pong. Yeah.

I don't like to stand like forty feet off the table and now ah, you know, I like to be right up on the table, calmly playing with the boys. And every now and then, gig guy, you know, give it all. You know the ol YMC a ping pong set up.

In the record.

I like playing ping pong and this is the last time that I played it where if you get the ball in the cup, everyone has to drink. How do you ever play that? Had the ping pong?

That sounds like another game, but it works.

It's not as athletic. The game doesn't last as long, and by the time you get to twenty one, someone has to be taken to the hospital.

Exactly.

That's a good news. It's the good news.

Yeah, this is a continuing saga of the badassery of Samuel more, more and more. These films, these characters have been around for fifty years, six years.

I mean, Nick Fury was around when I was a kid. I used to read Nick Fury comic books. You know. He was a white guy with a cigar in a patch. Yes, but then he became David Hasselholl for a while, and then he became me.

So the evolution of Nick Fury continues.

It does, indeed, And may I say it's been upgraded.

I believe.

I believe that Samuel L.

Jackson I'd like to feel that way too, But I almost wonder.

You know, they were never able. The technology of movies was never at the advanced level that it is now that these superheroes could on screen really appear realistic, and it could you could get the jolt. I wonder if that's why it's only now that these movies are so big.

I think part of is the technology, and I also think part of is the accessibility of what we're able to do as real people now. You know, when I was a kid. I would read a comic book, and I would want to be in a world where, you know, there were women walking around in tights with green hair and blue hair, and folks had capes on and they were wearing boots.

And they call that San Francisco. I believe that. Oh, yeah, exactly.

And now you know, we have all that, and people are walking around, you know, people are walking around talking on things, and they're looking at stuff on the little devices. So it's all very real for us. The only thing missing is this cat that actually flies. Yes, you know that land somewhere, you know, and he's probably out there somewhere, just you know, waiting to come out.

I believe that's right.

I wonder.

I've always thought that science takes its cues from you know, all the great Asimov and Wells and all the great sort of fiction writers and science fiction writers, and they see something like that in a comic strip and go, I bet I could make that. You know that they're taking their cues almost from the imaginations of a guy like Stanley.

Yeah, well there's that, And you know there's also the fact that I used to dream I could fly, right, I used to dream I could breathe underwater, you know, and all that kind of stuff, and I wanted to do it really.

Badly, you know.

And now you know I put on that costume. When I fall into that Marvel playground, I'm like, I'm in heaven.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's like ha ha have it.

You know.

I put my high pats on and I walk out there and I'm invincible man.

And they created realistically, you know, in the old days, the superhero like Hulk, they just find the biggest guy they could and paint him.

Green back and that would be.

You know, but the effects now and everything else that surrounds it. Is it when you're doing it, when you're making it, is it tedious?

Is it?

Do you feel the sement or is it just you and Spandex in front of like a green flat and they're just like, now the monster's coming.

Like in the beginning, you sort.

Of felt that way back when I first started doing Star Wars. It was just a big green room and we had some things in there, and then you know, I had my lightsaber and George will say, okay, there's this thing attacking you. Now go how big is it? It's as big as an s Biggs, an SUV. I go really and how how how fast is it? He says,

I love that.

I got my music going and.

My hell like.

I'm jumping up, running and then all of a sudden, when I go to the movies, it's like.

Yeah, amazing, look at me.

Yeah yeah, so yeah, it's all that and more.

But when you're doing like that car chase we had.

Like, but that looks actually dangerous, like are you.

Well, we had like twelve cars that all did different So when you see the movie, there's one point where it's like nineteen guys firing bullets at it. The windows are just resisting the bullets and I'm just sitting in the car like.

And that's like a dope ass feeling. Yeah yeah, well you.

Actually you're just in the car, you know.

And we were shooting in Cleveland, so we're on the streets of Cleveland and people in the office buildings.

Like welcome to the show, thanks so much. You are a bona fide legend, sir. You are truly just the epitome of not just hard work, but like talent, paying off, inspiring people in every way, shape or form. Been in more than one hundred and fifty movies, some of the

When they came to me with the idea, it was about, you know, finding these ships that had gone down, captured Africans on them that didn't make it, and you know, in my mind, I.

Was like, Okay, this is gonna be dope. You know.

We get some divers and maybe I can die with them, you know, and go down and we'll find skeletons with shackles.

Still on them and stuff like that. And then combined with.

Finding my ancestry and going into ancestry dot com and finding out that I was tribally connected to the Binger tribe in Gabon and that was a lot of the traffic that came through there and what happened. It was a way for me to reconnect with my identity in that particular way and to tell a story that we never talk about, the people that didn't make it and what happened and how those how those people still profited from those people that.

Did not make it.

They didn't make it to wherever they were going here Brazil, uh Or or or the West Indies to work, but they still get money from these people's bodies being stolen from this particular place. And it was a chance for me to do something which is so crazy in my mind when.

I think about it.

When people would ask me had I been to Africa, and I'd say, well, yeah, and then so, well were you there? And so I've been to Cape Town, I've been Johannesburg, and I've been to Morocco and Egypt. Oh you haven't been to Africa, the real Africa.

I'm like, what you're talking about? So I got to go to Gabon and hang out there.

One thing I've never taken for granted when I when I talked to some of my friends African Americans, who say, man, Trevor, being stolen from your cultural identity is is such a you know, there's a piece that you don't even realize is missing, and just the story that you tell yourself about yourself. I wonder what that was like for you, going back to a place where you didn't only go I'm from here, like my lineage is from here, but they said, no, you are a lost son of this tribe.

Wow? It was.

No spiritually uplifting to connect with the tribe and to look around and see my relatives in a real sense of faces that I knew or you know and understand, and to be welcomed by some people that looked at me in a different kind of way, like come home and I'm there with these people and I'm looking at them and they're so open, They're so welcome, and the ceremony itself to participate in that and to look in these people's eyes and see that you know, they really are.

Do you feel that way?

It's like, I don't want you defining what I feel, because sometimes it survivors remorse.

Wow, you know that had that not happened, I.

Wouldn't have reached the place that I reached here that allowed me to come back and tell this story. You know what would have happened had I never you know, had my ancestors never been taken from that place and I was brought here.

So you feel a different kind of responsibility.

But because you did achieve what you achieved despite what this country is, and you are able to come back and hopefully encourage or tell a story that makes somebody want to go and see it for themselves.

You are somebody who has not just created history, but you've lived through history. And I really like that you say telling those stories. You know, reading through your story, I was amazed at how much you've lived through Everyone focuses on your movies, but I look at the world that you've lived, and it's been like a movie. For instance, I didn't know that Samuel L. Jackson grew up with a stutter. You know, I didn't know that about.

You fast it comes back, right.

But I also didn't know, and you correct me, that's wrong. I didn't know that sometimes you would use the word mother to just like get your mouth moving.

Yeah, to just center myself and stop.

You see, Like, there's so many things about you that I didn't know. I didn't know, for instance, that you went to mlk's funeral after he was assassinated, and I didn't know that you were part of those protests, And a lot of who you are has been shaped by

Well, there's an evolution of you know, protests when you look at it. When I was a kid, I grew up in basically American apartheid. I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and you know, there were places I couldn't go. All my schoolmates were black. I didn't interact with white people unless I went downtown. And when the civil rights movement began or the city and started, my parents and grandparents were terrified that.

I was going to go down there and get killed. But I was too young though anyway. But I got the college at more Off College in Atlanta.

I started to meet and see and talk to people from Snick, from SELC and I can make a differentiation about which idea I liked, And all of a sudden I had an ideology. And the war started, So that was the anti war protest. I didn't know anything about

Them with fire hoses and all that stuff.

People were going, wow, this is America, and we were like, yeah, this is America.

It's like us watching the apartheid you know, protest. Right.

I met guys from South Africa, came to more house and they were they were there, they were my classmates. So we learned more about apartheid because we had a personal connection to talk to people about it.

So we understood that, oh, it ain't just happening to us. There's some world watch it happening here.

So all of a sudden, it's like, okay, so we're brothers in arms and everybody trying to you know, get free from these shackles that everybody's got on us, that tried to keep us down because they wanted they want to keep the things. We started to understand that, you know, change change, change doesn't happen without you know pain.

Uh.

And when I look at these kids today, I am so proud of them, number one.

But what we need to.

Understand and press on them is they're using your militancy to say, to make the dominant culture afraid of you, even you're a part of the dominant culture. So you need to go home and tell your parents. Your parents know that you're not dangerous. So you have to convince your parents to go out and tell these other parents

No, man, go vote. You know you got to get rid of to do it before you can change the place.

And Samuel Jackson, I appreciate you for existing. I appreciate you for taking the time to be on my show. Thank you so much, my friend, look off to yourself.

You know I'm running, but you messed up when you said I can come over there anytime, and just.

Say what time?

Anytime?

Taking you up on that, okay? Please go vote.

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