After playing Nick Fury for sixteen years in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it’s difficult to imagine any other actor in the role than Samuel L. Jackson. The 75-year-old recently reflected on his tenure playing the esteemed S.H.I.E.L.D. director in a video sitdown with GQ Magazine, where he admitted that he was initially shocked by the proposed duration he’d be playing Fury when talking to Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, beginning with a cameo appearance at the end of 2008’s Iron Man.
“I knew I had a nine-picture deal,” Jackson said. “[Marvel Studios head] Kevin [Feige] said that: ‘We’re going to offer you a nine-picture deal.’ How long do you have to stay alive to make nine movies? It’s not the quickest process in the world. I didn’t know they were going to make nine movies in like two and a half years. That’s kind of crazy! Oh sh–, I’m using up my contracts. It worked out.”
Jackson has since appeared as Fury in the MCU on myriad occasions, including the first Avengers film, Captain America: Civil War and the Secret Invasion series on Disney+.
Though he’s been played Nick Fury for almost as long Hugh Jackman has played Wolverine, Jackson still has one wishlist for his character in the MCU: appearing in Wakanda, home of the Black Panther.
“All the Black people in the Marvel Universe were trying to figure out, ‘Why can’t we go to Wakanda?’ Me, Don, Anthony Mackie… but they made it. They got to go fight. I still didn’t get there,” he said. “I thought that about Civil War when the kids were fighting. The kids are fighting and I’m not gonna make them go to their rooms? How does that make sense?”
Nine years is a long time for any actor to be locked down doing Marvel movies but Jackson says he hasn’t regretted his time as the head of Marvel’s special enforcement counter terrorism government agency.
“As jaded as I wanted to be about it, you know thinking, ‘Well, I should have won an Oscar for this or should have won for that and it didn’t happen,’ once I got over it many years ago, it wasn’t a big deal for me,” Jackson said previously in an interview with The Los Angeles Times. “I always have fun going to the Oscars. I always look forward to getting a gift basket for being a presenter. I give stuff to my relatives; my daughter and my wife would take stuff out. It’s cool. … But otherwise, I was past it.”
Jackson added that winning an Academy Award was never his measure of being a successful actor. He continued, “I was never going to let the Oscars be a measure of my success or failure as an actor. My yardstick of success is my happiness: Am I satisfied with what I’m doing? I’m not doing statue-chasing movies. You know: ‘If you do this movie, you’ll win an Oscar.’ No, thanks. I’d rather be Nick Fury. Or having fun being Mace Windu with a lightsaber in my hand.”
What do you think of Samuel L. Jackson’s reaction when he first signed with Marvel Studios? Let us know in the comments.
