The relationship between actor Samuel L. Jackson and writer/director Quentin Tarantino goes back to their earliest days. Jackson auditioned for a part in “Reservoir Dogs” before eventually nabbing the breakout part in the 1994 hit “Pulp Fiction” which earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Since then, the two have collaborated on multiple films such as “Jackie Brown,” “Kill Bill Vol.2,” “Inglourious Basterds,” “Django Unchained,” and “The Hateful Eight.”
As you’ve likely heard, Tarantino claims he will retire from theatrical directing once he completes his tenth and final movie. While we’re still being kept in the dark about what is ultimately going to be, Jackson seems to be just as clueless as we are at the moment and hasn’t been assured he has a role waiting for him.
While speaking with the Los Angeles Times, Jackson has revealed not only isn’t being kept in the loop about Tarantino’s potential final film but also didn’t get a phone call when it came time for casting his Oscar-winning pic “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.”
“I don’t know. He’ll tell me or he won’t tell me,” Jackson told the L.A. Times. “I didn’t hear from him at all when he did [“Once Upon A Time In Hollywood”]. Usually, he’ll call me and say he’s doing something and ask how I feel about it.”
The veteran actor also mused about how he had to convince the director to allow him to do the voice-over work in “Basterds” after he was set on getting a French actor to do it and even offered to learn French for it.
“Like when he did the Nazi movie, he was like, ‘There’s nothing for you in this,’” Jackson said. ” ‘I can learn how to speak French.’ ‘No, I’m having a French guy.’ So I did the voice-over about celluloid and the movies.”
We actually shouldn’t be terribly surprised that Jackson hasn’t really heard a peep about Tarantino’s future feature film plans (outside of teases like “Kill Bill 3”) as he’s been busy preparing scripts for a potential television spinoff of “Hollywood” focusing on Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Cliff Booth’s fictional 1950s western series “Bounty Law.”
It’s unclear when “Bounty Law” will go in front of cameras, but there is some scuttlebutt about drama on the production side, so keep an ear out. When Tarantino will decide to make his final film and its subject matter remains a mystery.