Samuel L. Jackson Reveals Why He Thought Django Would Deserve Him an Oscar

Despite being one of the most recognizable actors in Hollywood, veteran Samuel L. Jackson has never triumphed in any of the Academy Awards acting categories. Actually, he only boasts one nomination in his entire career, for the iconic pulp fiction of 1994. However, ten years ago, the North American believed he had enormous possibilities of competing and succeeding in the shortlist for Best Supporting Actor. Or at least, that’s what he declared —with a certain mocking air— in a recent interview, asserting that the Oscars must have fallen for his malicious character in Django Unchained.

In Django Unchained, from director Quentin Tarantino, Samuel L. Jackson played Stephen, a sort of butler to Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a 19th-century southern landowner who has the title character’s (Jamie Foxx) wife in his possession. However, despite his African roots, Stephen himself turns out to be a supporter of slavery and a staunch ally of the evil Candie. Basically, someone more “white” than “black,” as Django suggests in one of the film’s final scenes.

«django it was probably my best chance [de ganar un Óscar] because he’s the most evil character I’ve ever played and black people are usually rewarded for playing horrendous things“said Samuel L. Jackson between laughs, in an interview with Los Angeles Times.

Curiously, countless fans of Tarantino’s revisionist western will argue that it wasn’t just Jackson who was unfairly ignored by the Academy Awards, considering the praise Foxx and DiCaprio’s work also earned. In the end, the Austrian Christoph Waltz —interpreter of the honorable Dr. King Schultz— became the only member of the cast of django with an Oscar nomination and thus obtained his second statuette, after having already triumphed for Inglorious Bastards three years before.

On the other hand, Samuel L. Jackson stopped praising the great Hollywood ceremony for a long time. Basically, ever since she was denied an Oscar for her role as Jules in pulp fiction. In his place, Martin Landau won, who managed to seduce the voters for his impersonation of Bela Lugosi in the biopic Ed Wood. But when it comes to cultural impact, obviously Jackson and pulp fiction They were one of the top winners of that 90s night. And from the actor’s perspective, that’s what the Academy should have rewarded.

“A long time ago, when Martin Landau got the award and I didn’t, I’d hear, ‘Come on, Sam. Martin has been nominated many times. Don’t worry. Your time is coming.’ Sorry? I didn’t know it worked like that. I thought [se premiaba] the performance that had the greatest impact,” he told LA Times. «Best actor, best actress… That’s stupid. That’s a popularity contest.”

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In 2022, Samuel L. Jackson received the Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. However, the idea still prevails in him that the Academy Awards have lost a certain glamor and mystique that once made them so attractive.

“That’s the night Hollywood celebrates fucking Hollywood. That thing we used to have when I was young: look at her [la entrega del Óscar] and ask myself: ‘What am I going to say when I have mine?’. It was the glamor of it all, the extravagance, the mystique that is Hollywood. Some of that is gone,” she noted in the same interview.

And I add:

“You have movie stars who are influencers or people who live out loud, so you know a lot more about them than you used to. But it should still be a celebration of you doing something great. As I keep saying, there should be an award for the movie that made the most money.”

We will see Samuel L. Jackson soon in the series secret invasion from Marvel Studios, where he will be back in the shoes of the relentless Nick Fury. In the cast he is accompanied by Ben Mendelsohn, Cobie Smulders and Martin Freeman, as well as Olivia Colman and Emilia Clarke, two of the future new faces of the MCU. On the other hand, the show does not yet have a tentative release date on Disney Plus.