Samuel L. Jackson on His Viral Meme After Tony Award Loss: ‘Would’ve Been Shocked Had I Won’

Samuel L. Jackson was really just enjoying a date night with his wife, actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson at this year’s Tony Awards.

He also happened to be nominated for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his turn in the revival of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. When the actor, 74, lost to four-time Tony-nominee Brandon Uranowitz, Jackson’s televised reaction was immediately turned into a meme which went viral.

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“My reaction is always a meme,” he explained to PEOPLE during his interview for the One Last Thing page in this week’s issue. “I was just agreeing when they said [the winner]. I was like, ‘Mm-hmm. Just like I thought.’ The expectation was that. I would’ve been shocked had I won.”

The actor, who returns as Nick Fury in Disney+’s new Marvel series Secret Invasion, and his wife continued the celebration at a post-show party for the cast and crew.

“I had drinks and ate five sliders and a lamb chop,” he says. “Saw people from the cast that I hadn’t seen since the show closed in January. The understudies were there, people that weren’t part of the Netflix film that we just finished in Atlanta. So I got to see them all again and that was great.”

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After he called it a night around 2 a.m., Jackson was still relishing the energy of the awards ceremony.

“The show wasn’t over until 11 o’clock. I was thinking since we don’t have writers and they don’t have scripts, we’re going to be out of here like that,” he says. “But we had all those nice dance numbers from every show on Broadway.”

The first-time Tony nominee was especially impressed with the speeches.

“It was a really festive night of people saying things that mean more than, ‘I want to thank my agent and I want to thank my manager,'” he adds. “People talking about being in a show that’s like a family or being part of the Broadway community, or the greater theatrical community that is a lifestyle more than an occupation. It was awesome. It was very much like a big family gathering… with a talent show.”

Secret Invasion is now streaming on Disney+.