I hope he burns in newscaster hell! Samuel L. Jackson may not have muttered those words during his recent interview with KTLA’s Sam Rubin, but he certainly showed off the forceful side of his personality that has made him such a coveted Hollywood actor. Mr. Jackson don’t take no mess! He certainly did not take too kindly to entertainment anchor Rubin confusing him with another Hollywood A-List actor during their live on air interview. Jackson minced no words in sharing these sentiments either.
During a KTLA broadcast on Monday February 10th, Jackson was interviewed remotely to do a promo for his upcoming RoboCop film remake to hit theaters February 12th. The interview started off without a hitch and was going smoothly until Sam Rubin asked about Jackson’s recent Super Bowl commercial. After a very awkward and revealing silence, Jackson responded “What Super Bowl commercial?” Poor Rubin became aware of the flub and attempted to disregard it and move on with the interview, but Jackson wasn’t going to let him off the hook so easily.
Jackson intuitively knew that Rubin must have mistaken him for Laurence Fishburne who filmed a Matrix themed ad for Kia automobiles that aired during Super Bowl, and his response was pretty awesome. Jackson reprimanded Rubin with, “You are as crazy as the folks on Twitter…We don’t all look alike!” Jackson’s comment suggests that the actor felt Rubin could not tell the difference between one black male from another and Jackson having been so heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement was really taken aback at how poorly prepared Rubin was. Jackson proceeded to offer Rubin some notes on “who” exactly he was, so that Rubin could interview him. Jackson ended his tutorial quite hilariously with “I have never done a McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial.”
Well Rubin was undoubtedly embarrassed about his live on-air mishap, especially since he is a “multiple Emmy winner” according to his official bio and as such, he took steps to repair the damage to his reputation. Rubin actually called in to TMZ to complain about TMZ’s coverage of his disastrous interview with Jackson because he was upset with the information they did not include in their story. Specifically, Rubin felt that TMZ should have mentioned that he went on air following the interview to offer an apology for his blatant mistake. The funniest thing is that Rubin explicitly told TMZ that he had not reached out personally to Jackson yet at that time and mentioned that he had plans to write a note later on in the day to the actor.
Clearly Rubin did not really care that he offended Jackson, or he would have immediately wrote the note, sent the flowers or put into action whatever plans for an apology he had come up with. No. Rubin only went on air to apologize in order to clear his own name up with KTLA viewers. He contacted TMZ to try and clear things up for his network and his own reputation. It seems Jackson hit a nerve when he quizzed Rubin about his employment and how he secures it, when he clearly does not know how to properly prepare to adequately perform his job duties. It sounds as if Rubin is in plain old fashioned “damage control” mode as he may be out of a job soon. The dirt from this fall may never come out of Rubin’s britches. Wash out what you can and let us know what you think about all this in the comments below.