Samuel L. Jackson: “When folks go ‘It’s just an honor to be nominated’ – no it ain’t”

Samuel L. Jackson is currently promoting The Piano Lesson, which streams on Netflix. It’s another adaptation of an August Wilson play, and Malcolm Washington directed it and co-wrote the adapted screenplay. Sam is currently 75 years old (man, he’s ageing well) and as always, he works so consistently. Sam and Nicole Kidman work like they’re paying off gambling debts. But I digress! While Sam received an honorary Oscar in 2021, he’s only received one Oscar nomination for an actual acting role – Pulp Fiction, back in the 1990s. Well, Sam is here to tell everyone that, actually, it’s not an honor just to be nominated.

Samuel L Jackson said in a video interview with AP Entertainment, while promoting his role in Netflix’s “The Piano Lesson,” that Oscar nominations aren’t too big of a deal for him. Shockingly, Jackson has only earned one Oscar nomination during his illustrious career — for “Pulp Fiction,” which he landed a best supporting actor nod for in 1995. Jackson was awarded an honorary Academy Award in 2021.

“We’ve been in the business long enough to know that when folks go, ‘It’s just an honor to be nominated.’ No it ain’t. It’s an honor to win,” Jackson said with a laugh. “You get nominated and folks go, ‘Yeah I remember that.’ Or most people forget. Generally it’s a contest you didn’t volunteer to be in. I didn’t go in there so I could flex. ‘Let me do my scene, so you can remember who I was.’”

“They nominate you and people go, ‘What is that movie you’re nominated for? What’s the name of that thing?’ And after it’s over and people have a hard time remembering who even won,” Jackson added.

[From Variety]

First of all, maybe I’m an old fart now (#facts) but back in the day, Oscar nominations really did mean a lot more, and so did the Oscars. Back in the day, people did know and remember who won and who was nominated. But these days – and it’s been this way for years now – I do think all of it has just declined in significance and importance overall. People genuinely don’t remember who was nominated for what, and they barely remember the winners. Like, Gary Oldman won a Best Actor Oscar for wearing a fatsuit and prosthetics to play an extremely drunk Winston Churchill. Rami Malek won for those teeth. I totally forgot that Eddie Redmayne won for The Theory of Everything! Anthony Hopkins won and they didn’t even let him speak because they thought it would go to Chadwick Boseman! The past ten years have been messy as hell.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.

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16 Responses to “Samuel L. Jackson: “When folks go ‘It’s just an honor to be nominated’ – no it ain’t””

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  1. maisie says:

    my brother excelled in an elite sport, won a bronze medal in the world championships (non-olympic year). he told me once that our dad said “second place is just the first loser” when he came home with a silver medal. not sure if that was good or bad advice.

    • ML says:

      Maisie, How awful for your brother! Elite sports are grueling, and to sacrifice that much, to put in that much of an effort and then to be told you’re a loser instead of celebrated as being one of the few at the top? Yikes!

      One of the things I noticed about the difference between living in the US and in the NLs, is that the Dutch ate much prouder of silver and bronze medalists.

      • ooshpick says:

        I hope your brother has other people in his life who can mirror his worth to him. Ugly sentiments from your dad.

    • somebody says:

      So, Dad, I assume, won a gold?

  2. ooshpick says:

    As I got older I realized that good films don’t necessarily get seen. The mainstream offerings are usually quite crappy and so I don’t care who wins. Hollywood is not for actors, it’s for stars.

    • Emcee3 says:

      Hollywood now is also for Amazon Studios & Jeff Bezos [Netflix, Apple, et al] who want to launder their awful corporate reputations by making “art”. The rush to their respective streaming platforms – & enhance their bottom line – is also what has diluted the audience cinema experience & thus our memories of quality films.

  3. FancyPants says:

    When I was younger, I used to think the Oscars were a huge deal, the best award for the best actors, but knowing what I know now about the “campaign” of it all it strikes me more as the annual Hollywood prom king & Queen elections. It’s just another trope now for actors to make themselves “ugly” just to win an Oscar, not to even mention the kind of things they had [still have?] to do in the Weinstein era to get nominated.

  4. Fina says:

    I also remember the nominations from the 90s better. Maybe because I was more interested back then. But honestly also because, as far as I can remember, it was stars competing at the time. I am aware that this shows my ignorance but nowadays I have not heard of many of the nominated actors or the movies they are nominated for before Oscar season starts. Movies competing in the 90s like Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love, I feel everyone had watched. It does not help that the only blockbusters nowadays are superhero fare and sequels.

  5. Ariel says:

    I will go to the grave angry on Mr Jackson’s behalf that instead of winning for that unforgettably great performance in Pulp fiction, almost every award for supporting actor that year went to elderly martin landau as a de facto lifetime achievement award for that sh*tty Tim Burton movie.

    Almost every other category went to Forrest Gump that year- I thought that movie was stupid too, baby boomer nostalgia and a cute mentally impaired mascot.

    Yep. It’s stupid Samuel Jackson doesn’t have an Oscar.

    • Emcee3 says:

      I absolutely *loathed* Forest Gump. And the film is different from the source material, as I recall from the VanityFair article “Producing is as Producing Does” – deleting Gump’s drug use in a rewrite. There was a lot of maneuvering to make this film appealable to the award circuit, which sort of echoes elements of this CB post today.

      It’s a slightly gossipy hate-read. I might go find it for some salty nostalgia.

    • Spartan says:

      FG was such obvious American nostalgia /propaganda I hated it from the get go.

    • Deering24 says:

      Ariel–gotta disagree with you here. Ed Wood was arguably Burton’s best movie ever; and Landau deserved the Oscar for a very tough role. The fact Jackson hasn’t won one yet _is_ a sin and a shame, though–he’s put in a lot of worthy performances.

  6. Carrie V says:

    I totally, totally remember Eddie Redmayne winning for The Theory of Everything because he was brilliant. He should also have won for The Danish Girl.

  7. Grant says:

    I mean, I don’t entirely agree. Being able to put *Academy Award Nominee before one’s name in virtually every prestige project one ever does is a big boon. So much of booking gigs is public perception and being seen as an Oscar-nominated actor bumps people up an echelon. That isn’t to say that people will win Oscars and never have a clunker again, or even fade off the map…