The real reason Samuel L Jackson and Spike Lee feuded for years: “I thought we had a relationship”
Before Samuel L Jackson went supernova with Pulp Fiction’s Jules Winfield in 1994, he had been slowly building his profile since the late 1980s. In fact, one of the first directors to cast him in a film was Spike Lee, for whom he played Leeds in School Daze. Over the next three years, Jackson appeared in three more Lee joints: Do the Right Thing, Mo’ Better Blues, and Jungle Fever.
Jackson’s searing portrayal of crack addict ‘Gator’ in Jungle Fever was so incredible that the Cannes Film Festival created an award out of thin air, ‘Best Supporting Actor’, just to praise it. Indeed, the festival hadn’t utilised that category for a decade before Jackson came along, and to date, it hasn’t been used again.
At this point, it seemed that Jackson and Lee had formed a fruitful creative partnership that could only go from strength to strength. Instead, to the surprise of both men’s fans, Jackson took 22 years to appear in another Lee film, 2013’s Oldboy remake. Cinephiles couldn’t help wondering why their collaboration didn’t continue throughout the ’90s and ’00s, especially as Jackson cemented his status as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. Surely he could have made movie magic with Lee alongside all his Quentin Tarantino films and Marvel projects?
Unfortunately for film buffs everywhere, the world was robbed of more Jackson and Lee joints because the two men fell out in the early ’90s. Even more disappointingly, they didn’t clash over a creative decision or have a heated argument in their personal lives. Instead, the breakdown in their relationship was about money and how both men felt slighted by the other during a negotiation.
When Lee was putting together Malcolm X, his seminal biopic about the famed civil rights activist, he asked Jackson to audition to play the man who introduces Islam to Malcolm Little in prison. Jackson dutifully did so, and Lee offered him the role, but he soon received a phone call from Jackson’s agent saying his client was turning down the part. You see, Lee proposed paying the star scale plus ten, which translates to the minimum salary the Screen Actors’ Guild allowed, plus 10% for his agent, and Jackson wasn’t happy.
“I was disappointed,” Lee admitted. “What bothered me was not that he didn’t want to do the film, but the fact that he had his agent call me. I would have preferred it if he had said, ‘Look, Spike, I can’t do it. I understand that you can’t pay me the money I want, so I gotta do what I gotta do.'” To Lee, it was a personal insult to have an agent relay the bad news, because he always called Jackson personally to tell him he’d got his previous roles. “I thought we had a relationship,” he shrugged. “I thought wrong.”
However, Jackson’s recollection of events, not to mention the implication of Lee’s words, was slightly different. He claimed they did speak about it on the phone, and the conversation was “not the most pleasant. He said what he had to say, and I kind of laughed at it.” Jackson viewed Lee bringing up the fact that he cast him in his previous films as his way of implying he was “indebted” to the director, and this rubbed him the wrong way. “I replied that I felt he was indebted to me in a certain kind of way,” Jackson chuckled. “Spike didn’t take the rejection too well.”
For Lee, the issue boiled down to feeling disrespected by Jackson communicating through his agent, and the salary offer wasn’t personal. Malcolm X was a low-budget movie, and Lee was working with what he had. However, Jackson felt his track record in Lee’s movies, plus his increasing profile in Hollywood, entitled him to a bit more scratch. He even hinted that Lee was slightly hypocritical about his offer because he knew the director was getting four salaries for the film: director, producer, writer, and star, as he played X’s childhood friend Shorty.
“After three or four films, you have to say, ‘You can at least offer me a back-end deal…and you want to pay me scale?'” Jackson grumbled. “Wait a minute now, I think I’m a better actor than you, too, so let me have the role that you’re doing and earn some more money myself!'”
