Samuel L. Jackson has nothing but praise for his Marvel costar and friend Brie Larson,
“Brie’s a stronger person than people give her credit for,” Jackson, 74, told Rolling Stone in a new interview published Tuesday, as he discussed his own career and how he and Larson, 33, became close on the set of 2017’s Kong: Skull Island.
Jackson described the making of that film as “not the most wonderful experience for either of us,” telling the outlet: “We became great friends during that particular experience because we were having such a hard time.”
“Then, we bonded through the election while we were doing her movie when Donald Trump won [the 2016 US presidential election],” Jackson continued, speaking of his 2017 film with Larson, Unicorn Store. “She was broken and I was like, “Don’t let ‘em break you. You have to be strong now.’ Then, when she got Captain Marvel, she called me and was like, ‘They want me in the Marvel Universe. Should I do it?’ And I was like, ‘Hell yeah! Let’s do it!’ ”
Jackson, whose Marvel character Nick Fury originally befriends Larson’s Carol Danvers in the ’90s-set 2019 movie Captain Marvel, went on to praise Larson as someone who won’t let unfair criticism “destory her.”
“These incel dudes who hate strong women, or the fact that she’s a feminist who has an opinion and expressed it? Everybody wants people to be who they want them to be,” Jackson said. “She is who she is, and she’s genuinely that.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Jackson praised his Secret Invasion costars Olivia Colman, Emilia Clarke, Ben Mendelsohn and Don Cheadle while speaking about the new Disney+ miniseries, which features Fury as he assembles a team to stop a group of shape-shifting Skrull aliens — first introduced in Captain Marvel — from taking over Earth.
“As many Marvel movies as Don and I have been in, I don’t think we’ve ever had a conversation until Secret Invasion. And I’ve known Don forever!” Jackson noted of his friendship with Cheadle, 58. “We never had a moment onscreen that was meaningful together until this particular thing.”
Jackson and Larson’s characters will reunite once more in the upcoming film The Marvels, which will also costar Ms. Marvel’s Iman Vellani and WandaVision’s Teyonah Parris as the latter pair’s own powers grow “entangled with” Carol Danvers’ powers, according to an official synopsis.
“My biggest concern with Marvel was trying to keep them from killing me more than anything else,” Jackson joked to Rolling Stone when asked whether he had pushed for Marvel Studios to center his character in a project.
“I always wanted to tell the story about who Nick was before he had these superhero friends — when he lived in the shadow world as a spy, and how he connected with these people,” he added, after noting once more that Nick Fury has not set foot in Wakanda. “Secret Invasion is not a superhero movie. It’s gritty and dark.”
Secret Invasion premieres on Disney+ Thursday, while The Marvels hits theaters Nov. 10.
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