Legendarily prolific actor Samuel L. Jackson had no problem saying yes when he was asked to join Kendrick Lamar for the Grammy and Pulitzer prize-winning rapper’s Super Bowl LIX halftime show in February in New Orleans. And while Jackson thought he was signing up for another one of his eclectic acting gigs, the Tulsa King co-star told Jimmy Kimmel on Monday night (Nov. 17) that he had no idea he was signing up to be a surprise guest at a “revolution.”
“Great time. I kind of had no idea when they called me and said, ‘Yeah, we’d really like for you to be part of Kendrick’s halftime show’… I was like ‘really?,’” Jackson recalled thinking at the time. When the show’s producers promised to send him the treatment for the show, consummate professional Jackson said he didn’t really care about all that and promised to be there when they needed him.
“And then when I got there and we were rehearsing, it was all kind of nice and fun and watching the dancers go through their routines,” he described. “It’s like, ‘damn! They’ve been rehearsing for a while, because they were like [snaps fingers.]’” In case you forgot, Jackson popped in dressed in a red, white and blue Uncle Sam outfit to welcome the crowd with the enthusiastic greeting, “your uncle… Sam and this is the great American game!”
Jackson said he had “no idea” about what was about to take place until dress rehearsal for what would become the most-watched halftime show in history, one in which he would provide Greek chorus-like commentary on the racial state of the nation. “That was the first time I knew we were doing a revolution,” Jackson said of the eye-popping spectacle at the Caesars Superdome that featured guest stars SZA, tennis great Serena Williams crip walking and record producer Mustard.
“I knew I was dressing as Uncle Sam, but I just thought that was like, okay, fine, it’s an Uncle Sam thing,” Jackson said. “When dress rehearsal starts I’m there I’m doing it and I turn around and I said, ‘wait a minute, that’s a flag… they’re making a flag up there,” he recalled of the sight of the mass of dancers in red, white and blue forming into the American flag. “Oh, now I’m going, ‘ah, now it’s revolutionary.’” He said it never occurred to him before that moment that the dancers would be activated into Old Glory, especially since a lot of people already call him “Uncle Sam” on the regular.
Jackson, who has worked with rappers before, including LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes, also famously appeared in the 1992 crime drama Juice alongside late rap icon Tupac Shakur in his first major role in a film. The actor, who had met Shakur before, said he was a “nice enough kid,” but recalled an incident on set that might surprise fans familiar with Jackson’s legendarily NSFW dialogue.
On a night when Jackson wasn’t shooting, his wife, actress LaTanya Jackson was sitting in a room with the mothers of the other kids who appeared in the film and “Tupac came through there and he was cussing somebody out and yelling, screaming.” So LaTanya Jackson grabbed Shakur and told the rapper, “‘Hey, don’t you see all the grown women, you can’t talk like that and use that kind of language!’ And everybody in the room was like [big inhale]. And he totally apologized [and said] ‘I’m so sorry.’” From that point on, Jackson said, Tupac was a gentleman and whenever he saw the actor’s wife he would greet her with, “‘Hey mom, how you doing?’”
Kimmel said it did strike him as odd that Jackson’s wife had a problem with foul language given his f-bomb proclivities. “Only in a room full of grown women,” Jackson explained, with Kimmel confirming that scripted cursing is seemingly okay with her. “If I’m at home, it’ my house,” Jackson explained. “I can say what I want to.”
Watch Samuel L. Jackson on Jimmy Kimmel Live! below.
