-(laughs) -As I live and breathe.
I-I actually cleaned up. Wow.
I used-- I was-- I looked like I was in Hateful Eight, like,
about an hour ago.
You cleaned up for this interview?
-Of course. -Why would you do--
But it's corona time. I mean, this is the one time
where we don't care. We just go, like, "You know what..."
But you know I-- When I saw you at the Academy Awards
and I was like, "H-- Why am I never on your show?"
And you were like, "Oh. Well..."
I was like, "A-All right, now I have to look presentable."
Wow. No, no, no. No, no, no. Wait, wait, wait.
Samuel L. Jackson, let's have this conversation again.
The question you said was, "When am I gonna be on your show?"
I said, "Why have you never been on?"
You now are gonna make the public feel
like I didn't have Samuel L. Jackson on my show.
That is not how it happened.
Samuel L. Jackson can be on my show any--
-You can host the show if you want! -...once a year.
-(laughs) -Jon, Jon used to invite me at least once a year,
so I could come in the studio.
I can't invite you when it's your home.
You can come here anytime.
-Oh, really? -You could come in, you could come in
and just, like, say what you feel about the news that day
in one sentence and leave.
I can't invite you to the show.
-Really? I could do that? -(laughing)
Oh. Wait till I get back to New York.
Oh, man. Welcome, welcome, welc--
I'm glad we're finally making it happen.
I know we'll make it-- we'll make it happen some more.
-Welcome to the show. -Thanks so much. Yeah.
Um, you are a bona fide legend, sir.
You are truly just the epitome of not just hard work
but, um-- but, like, talent paying off,
inspiring people in every way, shape, or form.
Been in more than 150 movies,
some of the greatest movies of all time.
And I was shocked to find...
I was shocked to find out that you had never produced anything
with your production company with your wife.
And I was like-- I couldn't believe that this docuseries
that we're talking about today was the first thing
that you're producing.
And I was like, "Man, it has to be special."
And it really, really is.
Enslaved is not just a special series--
it's a personal series. Tell me a little bit about it.
Um, when they came to me with the idea,
it was about, you know,
finding these ships that had, uh, gone down...
captured Africans on them that didn't make it.
And, you know, in my mind, I was like,
"Okay, this is gonna be dope.
"You know, we'll get some divers
"and maybe I can dive with 'em, you know,
"and go down and we'll find, you know,
skeletons with shackles still on 'em and stuff like that."
And then, combined with, um,
finding my ancestry
and going into Ancestry.com
and finding out that I was tribally connected
to the Benga tribe in, uh, Gabon
and there was a lot of the traffic that came through there,
uh, and what happened,
it was a way for me to reconnect with my identity
in that particular way
and to tell a story that we never talk about,
the people that didn't make it
and what happened and how those--
how those people still profited
from those people that did not make it.
You know, they didn't make it to wherever they were going--
here, Brazil, uh,
or-or the West Indies-- to work,
but they still got money
from these people's bodies being stolen
-from this particular place. -Right.
And it was a chance for me to, uh, do something--
which is so crazy in my mind when I think about it--
When people would ask me had I been to Africa
and I'd say, "Well, yeah."
And they said, "Well, where you been?"
And I said, "Well, I've been to Cape Town,
I've been to Johannesburg, and I've been to Morocco and Egypt."
They go, "Oh, you haven't been to Africa."
Oh, that's funny. That's funny.
I'm like, "What are you talking about?"
Said, "You haven't been to real Africa."
I'm like, "What you talking about?"
So I got to go to Gabon and, um, hang out there.
One thing I've never taken for granted
when I talk to some of my friends,
African-Americans, who say, "Man, Trevor,
"being stolen from your cultural identity is-is such a...
"You know, there's a piece that you don't even realize
"is missing and just the story
that you tell yourself about yourself."
I wonder what that was like for you going back to a place
where you didn't only go, "I'm from here,
like, my lineage is from here," but they said,
"No, you are a lost son of this tribe."
What did that feel like for you?
Wow. Um, it was, uh,
you know, spiritually uplifting
-to connect with the tribe... -Mm-hmm.
and to look around and see... my relatives,
in a real sense of faces that I knew,
or, you know, uh, and understand
and to be welcomed by some people
that looked at me in a different kind of way.
-Right. -Like, "Come home."
And I'm there with these people, and I'm looking at them,
and they're so open, they're so welcome.
Uh, and the ceremony itself,
uh, to participate in that
and to look in these people's eyes
and see that, you know, they really are...
They're as proud of me leaving,
or what happened when I left,
-as I am of being there with them... -Right. Right.
and saying, "I'm glad to be back here
and be fulfilled by what this actually means."
To connect with something
that gives me a tangible connection to the continent.
Occasionally, a lot of times,
when we were shooting this thing,
when people start asking you how you feel,
uh, "Well, you feel this way or do you feel that way?"
And it's like, "I don't want you defining what I feel
because sometimes it's survivor's remorse."
-Wow. Wow. -You know?
That had that not happened,
I wouldn't have reached the place that I reached here
-that allowed me to come back and tell this story. -Right.
You know, what would have happened had I never...
you know, had my ancestors never been taken from that place
and I was brought here?
So you-you, uh, feel a different kind of responsibility
because you did achieve what you achieved,
-despite what this country is. -Mm-hmm.
And you are able to come back,
and hopefully, encourage or tell a story
that makes somebody want to go and see it for themselves.
You are somebody who has not just created history,
but you've lived through history.
And I really like that you say telling those stories...
You know, reading through your story,
I... I was amazed at how much you've lived through.
Everyone focuses on your movies, but I look at the world
that you've lived in. It's been like a movie.
For instance, I didn't know
that Samuel L. Jackson grew up with a stutter, you know.
I... I didn't know that about you.
Yeah, if I try to talk too fast, it comes comes back.
Right, but I also didn't know--
and you'll correct me if it's wrong-- I didn't know
that sometimes you would use the word "mother(bleep)"
to just, like, get your mouth moving.
Yeah, to just center myself and stop.
I... You see, like,
there's so many things about you that I didn't know.
I didn't know, for instance, that you went to MLK's funeral
after he was assassinated, and I didn't know
that you were part of those protests, and you...
A lot of who you are has been shaped by that time.
When you look at those protests back then,
and you look at the protests that are happening now,
and you look at the journey that Black Americans
and Black America has been on
for such a long time with its government,
I wonder if you... if you've seen something
that gives you a glimpse of hope.
Well, there's an evolution of,
you know, protests, when you look at it.
Um, when I was a kid,
I grew up in, basically, American apartheid.
I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
and, you know, there were places I couldn't go.
All my schoolmates were Black.
I didn't interact with white people unless I went downtown.
And, uh, when the civil rights movement began
or the sit-ins started,
uh, my parents and grandparents were, like, terrified,
you know, that I was gonna go down there and get killed.
-But I was too young to go anyway. -Mm-hmm.
But by the time I got to college
at Morehouse College in Atlanta,
uh, I started to meet and see and talk to people,
uh, from SNNC, uh, from SCLC,
and I can make a differentiation
about which idea I liked.
And all of a sudden, I had an ideology,
and the war started so there was the anti-war protests.
Right.
Which I didn't know anything about the war.
And the first Vietnam veterans I met were students
at Morehouse, guys who had been in the war, and they came back.
And they had hair like yours,
and we were like, "Who are these dudes?"
Had these black fists that they'd made out of these cords,
and they started talking about the war and what was happening.
And I had a cousin who was the same age as I was
who went to the Army and got killed.
And all of a sudden, the war was very real for me.
So, I was in the streets for that-- the anti-war protests.
Uh, and the...
the things that were going on-- we understood them,
and we could watch the old protests
when they sic dogs on people, and you know,
-and hitting them with fire hoses and all this stuff. -Yeah.
People were going, "Wow. This is America?"
And we were like, "Yeah, this is America."
It's like us watching the apartheid,
-you know, protests. -Right, right, right, right.
I met guys from South Africa who came to Morehouse,
and they were... they were my classmates.
So, we learned more about apartheid
because we had a personal connection
to talk to people about it.
So we understood that "Oh, it ain't just happening to us.
There's some worldwide shit happening here!"
-I'm sorry. -(laughter)
So, all of a sudden, it's like,
"Okay, so we're brothers in arms."
And everybody trying to, you know, get free
from these shackles that everybody's got on us
that tries to keep us down
because they want to... they want to keep the things.
We started to understand that, you know,
change... change... change doesn't happen
without, you know, pain.
Uh, and when I look at these kids today,
I... I am so proud of them, number one.
But what we need to... understand
and press on them is,
they're using your militancy to say...
to make the dominant culture afraid of you.
-Mm. -You're a part of the dominant culture.
So you need to go home and tell your parents.
Your parents know that you're not dangerous,
so you have to convince your parents to go out
and tell these other parents that,
"No, they're not dangerous.
"They're just trying to assert themselves
"and make the world a better place for them
"because they're going to inherit it.
"And this is what they need,
and this is what we need to do to support them."
-Yeah. -So, they need to, like...
You know, I'm not saying pull it back.
All I'm saying is, get those other people
to prop you up in another way.
And don't forget to go vote!
You got to understand how revolutionary an act voting is.
You can't just let that... "All right, that don't mean nothing,
so we gonna go out here and do this."
No, man. Go vote, you know?
You got to get ready to do it before you can change the place.
Samuel L. Jackson, I appreciate you for existing.
I appreciate you for taking the time to be on my show.
Thank you so much, my friend. Look after yourself.
You know, I'm running, but you messed up when you said
I can come over there any time and just say one...
Any time. Any time.
-Taking you up on that, you know? -(laughing): Yeah.
Peace out. Hey, please, go (bleep) vote!
(laughter)