Samuel L. Jackson says deleted scene from 1996 film would have won him an Oscar: ‘What the f–k?’
Samuel L. Jackson claims he would have been an Oscar winner by now if one specific scene had not been cut out from the 1996 film, “A Time to Kill.”
The Hollywood star, 73, might have one of the most decorated filmographies out there — but he has never won an Academy Award for any of his performances.
Speaking to Vulture, Jackson said some tear-jerking scenes that were ultimately cut from the movie “kept [him] from getting an Oscar.”
“But also the things they took out kept me from getting an Oscar,” Jackson said. “‘Really, motherf–kers? You just took that s–t from me?’ My first day working on that film, I did a speech in a room with an actor and the whole f–king set was in tears when I finished. I was like, ‘Okay. I’m on the right page.'”
“That s–t is not in the movie!” he continued. “And I know why it’s not. Because it wasn’t my movie, and they weren’t trying to make me a star. That was one of the first times that I saw that s–t happen. There are things that I’ve done in other movies where I said, ‘Wait a minute. Why did you take that moment out of the movie?’ Because the moment, in that movie, it’s bigger than the movie.”
In the film, which also starred Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey and Matthew McConaughey, Jackson plays a man who is on trial for killing two white men who abducted and raped his 10-year-old daughter.
Jackson, who eventually received an honorary Academy Award in 2021, elaborated further on the changes that execs made to the film.
“In ‘A Time to Kill,’ when I kill those guys, I kill them because my daughter needs to know that those guys are not on the planet anymore and they will never hurt her again — that I will do anything to protect her. That’s how I played that character throughout.
“And there were specific things we shot, things I did to make sure that she understood that, but in the editing process, they got taken out. And it looked like I killed those dudes and then planned every move to make sure that I was going to get away with it. When I saw it, I was sitting there like, ‘What the f–k?'”
Elsewhere in the interview, Jackson said he’s happy to be pals again with frequent collaborator Spike Lee following a longtime feud.
The Marvel actor began feuding with the Oscar-winning filmmaker, 66, back in 1992 after they had a fight over Jackson’s salary for the epic “Malcolm X.”
