Key Takeaways

• Samuel L. Jackson said he accepted Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime invitation immediately.
• He revealed he did not learn of the performance’s “revolution” concept until the dress rehearsal.
• The actor also recalled a moment on the Juice set when Tupac Shakur apologized to his wife after she confronted the late rapper over his harsh language.

Samuel L. Jackson provided new details about his involvement in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance during a Monday (Nov. 17) appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The conversation saw him explaining how he joined the production. “When they called me and said, ‘Yeah, we’d really like for you to be part of Kendrick’s halftime show,’ it’s like, ‘Really?’” he said. The veteran actor accepted the invitation immediately: “They said, ‘We’ll send you a treatment or whatever.’ I said, ‘I don’t really care. I’ll be there.’”

The “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” star described arriving and realizing how much work had already gone into the show. “Watching the dancers go through the routines, it’s like, damn, they’ve been rehearsing for a while,” he noted. He also said he didn’t grasp the full scope of what was taking place until the dress rehearsal. “That was the first time I knew we were doing a revolution,” he explained. “I knew I was dressing as Uncle Sam, but I just thought that was like, ‘Okay, fine. This is an Uncle Sam thing.’” Jackson added that many people already refer to him as “Uncle Sam” in everyday life, which he carried into the role.

One of the most memorable moments came when Jackson spoke about one of Lamar’s biggest collaborators. While discussing those he encountered on site, the actor described a piece of information that caught him entirely off guard: “I finally found out that there was a guy named Mustard, not just he was just yelling ‘mustard’... All that was new information for me.” The humorous comment was a presumed reference to Lamar’s signature ad-lib from the GNX standout “tv off.” The Mustard-produced number served as the halftime show’s closing track.

Samuel Jackson on his wife’s relationship with Tupac

Later in the interview, Jackson discussed his earlier experiences working with rappers in films, including Tupac Shakur in the 1992 movie Juice. He said he knew Tupac before the film and referenced a conflict involving the Hughes brothers and the fallen rapper, who was initially meant to star in Menace II Society.

Describing Tupac on the set of Juice, Jackson recalled an incident involving his wife, LaTanya Jackson, who also appeared in the film: “[He] came through there, and he was cussing somebody out, yelling and screaming,” he said. LaTanya intervened, telling the rapper he could not use that language around the women present. In response, Shakur “totally apologized,” and “from that point on, every time he saw [her], he was like, ‘Hey, mom, how you doing?’”