Since appearing in the final credits of the first Iron Man in 2008 as Nick Fury, the temperamental director of the agency that guides superheroes, Samuel L. Jackson has been an integral part of the project that transformed Marvel into one of the Big Hollywood brands. Always relegated to a secondary but key role, Fury has appeared in ten other studio features, and has also appeared in two series, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and the animated What If…?
The Oscar nominee for Pulp Fiction finally has a much more important place in the new Marvel proposal, Secret Invasion, which with the first of six episodes arrives this Wednesday the 21st at Disney after a long hiatus from the mini-studio, since She-Hulk: Lawyer She-Hulk premiered in August.
In a global press conference in which the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, the director of the series, Ali Selim and one of its producers, Jonathan Schwartz, along with a large part of the cast, also participated, Jackson was the center of the attention, since Fury is finally the central character of the story: “This is the most important thing I’ve done in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,” he said without hesitation, adding: “I loved Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the tone of that movie, in which Fury also had a major role, connects to this series in a very real way.
“Secret Invasion is about people doing things that normal people do, without all those superheroes coming to save you,” he said, facing the enthusiastic gaze of Ben Mendelsohn, Don Cheadle, Emilia Clarke, Olivia Colman, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Cobie Smulders. In the series, Fury has returned to Earth after a sidereal exile. Things have changed drastically for him after the Blip, the event that caused him and many of his friends to disappear at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. His mission, or rather his good intentions, is to help his Skrull friend Talos (Mendelsohn) stop a terrorist group led by his compatriot Gravik (Ben-Adir), whose actions are shocking the world.
“I don’t feel that this story only goes through Nick Fury”, Jackson clarified in the conversation, and explained: “for me it is also that of Gravik, that of the character of Emilia, that of Olivia. All of them help to make you want to keep looking to find out what is happening to them”. At least a few seconds later, the actor who will turn 75 in December claimed some of the credit: “Nick Fury here is the one who generates many of the things that happen to others and guides the viewer to meet all these characters They are really interesting.”
According to Jackson, having more of a leading role did not change the way he lived this shoot compared to other Marvel ones: “I know what my responsibilities are when I get to the set. I comply with the schedule, I know my parliaments well, I faithfully follow my marks. And I try to give the other actors something to work with. But above all things, I’m going to film to have fun. For me acting is like going to my game room. I wake up every day, have breakfast and go out to find my friends, to see what we are playing that day. And I want everyone to have as much fun playing with me as I do,” said the one who in November will continue this story on the big screen with The Marvels, in which Fury is once again one of the key characters along with Brie Larson, who returns Like Captain Marvel.
