Sony Pictures
Samuel L. Jackson, one of the most famed defenders of Quentin Tarantino liberal use of language, particularly a certain racial slur, was key in getting Leonardo DiCaprio to play the villanous plantation owner Calvin Candie. According to Jamie Foxx, it was Samuel L. Jackson who gave DiCaprio the needed confidence to read some of his more vulgar lines.
While past Quentin Tarantino scripts had used the word — his character in Pulp Fiction says it to Jackson’s Jules and John Travolta’s Vincent — Django Unchained obviously brought its usage to new levels, with it being uttered over 110 times in the film, many of them being said by DiCaprio.
Naturally, DiCaprio became a bit uncomfortable with the frequency he was required to say the word and apparently needed a little encouragement from Samuel L. Jackson, according to Foxx.
“The subject matter. The N-word, specifically. Leo had a hard time saying the N-word. We’re doing a read and Leo says, ‘Hey, guys. Cut! I just can’t do this. This is not me.’ Samuel L. Jackson goes, ‘Say that s—, motherf—–! It’s just another Tuesday. F– them,” Fox recently told Vanity Fair while promoting his new Netflix film Back in Action.
Jackson has long defended Tarantino’s use of the word, particularly in Django Unchained, essentially stating that it was a reality of the time and Tarantino is being accurate about it.
“Saying Tarantino said ‘n—–‘ too many times is like complaining they said ‘kyke’ [sic] too many times in a movie about Nazis,” Jackson said a the time of the film’s release. “There’s no dishonesty in anything that [Quentin] writes or how people talk, feel, or speak [in his movies],” he later added in the documentary QT8: The First Eight.
Despite now being considered one of the touchstone performances of his career, Leonardo DiCaprio was not nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Academy Awards. His co-star Christoph Waltz was, however, and took home his second Oscar, with his first being for his work in Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. Django Unchained was also nominated for Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay (which Tarantino won), Best Cinematography, and Best Sound Editing.