For the first half of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there was one constant and it was Nick Fury, played by the iconic Samuel L. Jackson. Fury, the former head of SHIELD and the man who was smart enough to recruit the super team The Avengers, had been missing since going underground in “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” He popped back up, however, at the end of “Avengers: Infinity War” and sent out a distress call just before falling into ashes like half of the universe. Now he’s back – sort of – in Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s “Captain Marvel.”
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The origin story of the key Marvel character takes place mostly in 1995 where Fury is an LA-based field agent for SHIELD who comes across an intergalactic soldier (Marvel, played by Brie Larson) who is engaged with a shapeshifting race known as the Skrulls. Marvel’s arrival opens Fury’s eyes to threats beyond the scope of SHIELD and, as you can guess, that eventually turns into the Avengers initiative that begins formulating a decade later.
The always prolific Jackson will also reprise his role of Fury in “Spider-Man: Far from Home” and will return to play John Shaft II in another installment of “Shaft” later this summer. He sat down last week to chat about playing Fury again, his rumored dislike for Marvel’s cat Goose (they have a lot of screen time together) and the impact of Marvel Studios a decade after its launch.
Spoiler alert: “Captain Marvel” explains how Nick Fury lost his eye and its eluded to but not spoiled per se in the context of this interview.
The Playlist: How long ago did Mr. Feige let you know that you going to have a major role in “Captain Marvel”?
Samuel L Jackson: I guess the summer before we started.
Had he hinted at all that there was a plan for you to be in this film or was it a surprise?
Surprise. I never know when the next Marvel’s coming. I mean, I knew I had a nine-picture deal and at a certain point, I knew I was closing in on the nine. This is eleven.
You’re playing a younger version of Fury with this one taking place in the ’90s. Did you talk to the directors, the screenwriters at all about giving Fury more of a different take or a different backstory that maybe you had thought about before?
No. They just wrote it. They wrote it. They sent it to me. I read it. I’m like, “Oh, O.K. I’m this guy. I know a lot but I don’t know a lot.”
Was that your take?
Basically, yeah. I mean, he’s been a soldier, he’s been in a war, he’s been in the shadow world. It’s fine, doing all this other stuff. Now for some reason, the Cold War is over, he’s on a desk doing threat assessment. He finally gets something interesting to do and when this call comes in and he meets the person he says, “Alien invaders?” He doesn’t buy that until he actually sees one and then it’s kind of like, “Oh, wait a minute. There are extra-terrestrials which means that these people I work for know that. I didn’t know there were aliens. They didn’t tell me.” So, that’s the beginning of Nick Fury being, “O.K., these guys are holding out something and I gotta figure out how to defend the world from something they haven’t told me about. I gotta find other people that are like this person that I just met so that I can do my job.”
This movie finally reveals what happened to Fury’s eye. It feels like it’s a telling point of his personality in that what happens to him that he keeps sort of ignoring it or not thinking it’s a big deal.
In the first script actually, there was a whole thing going on about it that kind of got reduced in a way, because when the incident happened, there were a couple of people there that saw it and went, “Oh my God. You need some whatever,” and they named this thing, and somebody gave it to me, but I never used it. Because I kept saying, “Oh, it’s just a scratch, that’s all. I don’t know what this stuff will do, whatever this is.” And he never used it. By the time he decided to use it, it was too late.
I also heard that you are not a pet person.
I’m not.
You have a lot of scenes with the cat in the film though. Was that annoying? Are you allergic?
I’m not anti-pet. I just don’t have any.
Oh, rumors are flying that Samuel L. Jackson doesn’t…
That I hate cats?
That you hate all animal, all pets, all animals.
No, I just don’t have time for them. [Laughs in the room.] Man, I’m never home. It bothers me when people have pets and they leave them in their house all day. I mean, cats are fine. They’re pretty self-sufficient. But dogs are there, they need companionship. So, that’s why people leave their TVs on so the dogs can watch TV. Cats, once again, are O.K., but rain, shine, snow, sleet, you gotta take a dog outdoors unless you got a nice big backyard and you can let them out. You still got to find somebody to come out and clean up behind them, so it’s a thing.
We’re in the 11th year of Marvel Studios. As someone who was pretty much there at the beginning did you ever in your wildest dreams ever think it would ever have this much of a cultural impact?
Sure. Mind you, I’d already been in the “Star Wars” universe, so I kind of know what that means when people fall in love when a franchise and they attach in a specific kind of way to it. I’m a Jedi. I’m a Jedi for life. You know, I’ve been accosted by the Jedi Council of several different countries in terms of people camping outside a hotel window and chanting all night. “Master Windu, please!” “You people are adults, right? You have jobs tomorrow? You gonna stay out here all night?” [Laughs.] I understood it, and, having been a comic book reader my whole life, still am, I understand the escape into those worlds when you’re sitting there reading them. For me, placing myself in it while I’m reading, and attaching to a specific character so I can experience it while I read it, and wanting to do all those things. Or, when I was a kid, going out with my friends and pretending to be all these different things. And to me, going to work, and being there with these people with these costumes on, and capes, the wires, and actually seeing people flying and do stuff, it’s kinda like, “O.K., this is the ultimate playground for me.” And other people who can’t do it but still live in those worlds of comic books and gaming and all that other stuff, it’s a very real kind of thing for them. So it’s easy for it to become a cultural phenomenon.
It’s unclear whether Fury will return in the upcoming “Avengers: Endgame” [Jackson gives an incredulous look as though he knows nothing] but recalling your time playing the character is there any scene, any moment that immediately pops in your mind?
Oh, just the first day that I’m in a room and every Avenger is there in Albuquerque. That day. The day that David Banner shows up and everybody else is already there and he’s the last one to arrive and we start talking about what’s going on in the world, and everybody’s there in their costume. He just hadn’t turned green yet. “Oh my God, look at this, it’s awesome.” And that was after my first appearance coming out of the shadows in “Iron Man.”
“Captain Marvel” opens nationwide on Friday.