Samuel L. Jackson has been scoring a lot of positive buzz for his turn as venomous house-slave Stephen in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained , and has taken the time to talk about what it’s like to work with his old collaborator.
“I read it straight through, laughed and thought, 'This is going to be fun’,” says Jackson, before explaining the conversation he then had with Tarantino having finished reading the script.
“[ I said ] ‘Well, this Django character was written 15 years too late for me, so you do want me to play the most hated negro in cinematic history, right?’ It was like, 'OK, I'm down with that. Let's see what happens.’”
And while Jackson is adamant that audiences are going to hate his character, he suggests that the material that was cut from the film would have strengthened that reaction even further.
“A lot of stuff I wish was still in the movie," he said. "That's who we are, we're actors. Every scene I shot I still want in the movie, but they're not. [ Stephen ] would be a lot more despicable if some of these scenes were still in the movie.
“We'll just have to wait for the five hour director's cut,” quipped Jackson, riffing on the film’s already lengthy runtime. Django Unchained opens in the UK on 18 January 2013.
