Samuel L Jackson’s savage 1991 meeting with Quentin Tarantino: “Who the fuck was that?”
It’s become impossible to imagine a Quentin Tarantino universe that doesn’t have Samuel L Jackson at its centre, with the filmmaker and actor becoming virtually inseparable since the first time they crossed paths.
Even when there isn’t an obvious role for him in the story or script, Tarantino will find a way to shoehorn the closest thing he’s got to a career-long muse in there anyway, like he did when Jackson became the unexpected narrator of Inglourious Basterds or as the piano player in Kill Bill: Vol 2.
Since their first collaboration on Pulp Fiction, Death Proof and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood are the only Tarantino flicks that Jackson hasn’t appeared in, and with the filmmaker’s next and tenth feature also expected to be his last, the smart money is that he’ll be involved somehow. After all, what’s the point in keeping his most prolific performer out in the cold for what’s going to be his swansong?
Had things gone another way, though, they’d have been interlinked from the start. Countless actors auditioned for the minimal number of roles available in Reservoir Dogs, with David Duchovny, George Clooney, and Viggo Mortensen among them, with Jackson reading for Mr Orange.
He had every right to be confident, with the audition taking place in late 1991, not too long after the release of Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever, with Jackson delivering a performance so good that the Cannes Film Festival dusted off and brought back its ‘Best Supporting Actor’ award, specifically to reward him for his efforts.
The star was hardly a novice at the time, but even then, the decidedly low-key setting for his Reservoir Dogs audition took him by surprise. “He was one of the people that was reading with me,” cinema’s favourite motherfucker recalled of his first time meeting Tarantino. “He and Lawrence Bender, the producer.”
“I was supposed to audition with Harvey Keitel and Tim Roth, but these two guys showed up. I was like, ‘Who the hell are these guys?’ Plus, they were awful,” he added for emphasis. “I left the audition and went, ‘Oh, I know I’m not getting this job. These dudes sucked. Who the fuck was that?’ I had no idea who they were.”
Jackson was under the impression that instead of letting him perform with a couple of well-known, established names who could actually act, he’d been partnered with a couple of dishevelled randoms off the street who couldn’t emote their way out of a paper bag, a skill Tarantino has resolutely failed to master in the 30-odd years since.
Obviously, they were the writer, director, and producer of Reservoir Dogs, but nobody bothered to tell him that. They’ve become one of modern cinema’s most iconic pairings, but Jackson’s savage first impression of Tarantino was a blunt, “Who the fuck was that?”
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