Samuel L Jackson On His First TV Starring Role In Dementia Drama The Last Days Of Ptolemy Grey: “Everybody Is A TV Star” Because Of The Pandemic

The last time 8days.sg spoke to Samuel L Jackson was back in 2019 when the actor was in town to promote Captain Marvel alongside co-stars Brie Larson, Gemma Chan and the movie’s directors, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck.

“Sure, I remember that,” says Jackson, when this writer reminds him of our encounter. But before my inside voice goes, “Holy smoke, Nick Fury remembers me”, he sarcastically adds, “There were only about 40,000 people that day.”

Ouch. What a helluva way to kick off the roundtable with this awkward record-needle-scratch moment. Then again, it seems fitting, too. The vagaries of memory is the subject of Jackson’s latest offering, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.

Based on Walter Mosley’s 2010 acclaimed book, the six-episode Apple TV+ series, which premiered last Friday (Mar 11), tells the story of Ptolemy Grey, a dementia-stricken geriatric who undergoes a revolutionary treatment to restore his fast-fading mind, so that he can look into the mysterious circumstance surrounding his caretaker’s death.

“I read the novel 10, 12 years ago and I thought Ptolemy was this fascinating, wonderful, and cinematic character that I thought would be fun to play,” Jackson 73, tells a group of journos from Los Angeles via Zoom.

The Ptolemy role not only gave Jackson (who’s also the executive producer) a chance to play someone fragile and vulnerable, a far cry from the badass heroes Nick Fury and John Shaft, it also resonated with him on a personal level: he had six relatives — including his mother and his grandfather — diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s.

“I was kind of surrounded by [the disease],” says Jackson. “As I thought more and more of doing this particular character, I gathered more poignancy in terms of my life — who I was, what I was dealing with and how I want to present this story to the world and what it would mean if it was possible to get it done.”

In other words, Jackson didn’t do much research for the part. “I’ve done all that over the years dealing with it,” he continues. “It was important that I present Ptolemy as a person that I hope people [with loved ones suffering from dementia] could see and get an honest feeling of how they [are going through].”

Is Jackson worried he would get dementia? “I know it’s possible,” he says. “It happened to a lot of people earlier in my family than my age right now. [That’s why] I tend to get a little squirrely when I go into a room and can’t remember why I walked into it. Or I can’t remember names I know that I know. I get a little frustrated by that. But I think the fact that I’m still working, I’m still learning lines — my faculty still works. I think I’m okay… for the moment. Hopefully that will be the case and I won’t wake up one day and not know anything.” 

Just the two of us: Samuel L Jackson shares a tender scene with Dominique Fishback, who plays Robyn, the orphaned teenager tasked with looking after Ptolemy after his grand-nephew and caretaker is killed in a shooting. Jackson reached out to Fishback after seeing her in the Oscar-winning Black Panthers drama ‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ and the Jamie Foxx superhero flick ‘Project Power’.

In a career spanning five decades, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey marks Jackson’s first live-action starring role in a TV series. (The Pulp Fiction actor voiced the titular character in the 2007 anime series Afro Samurai.) Why has he taken this long to make the transition to the small screen? Blame it on the COVID-19 pandemic, says Jackson, who’ll next revisit the MCU in the Disney+ limited series Secret Invasion, slated to come out later this year.

“The pandemic changed everything in terms of who’s able and not able to work, and what kind of things we can put out there [in the cinemas],” explains Jackson, who received an honorary Oscar in January. “So, all a sudden, everybody is a TV star — no matter what the project was, it was on a streaming service and you just become a performer.

“I always thought I should be able to do theatre, television, films and I guess if I wanted to, I could have pressed that issue but my agents and managers always made sure there was a film waiting for me to do when I finish my next film. So I don’t have to worry of fighting with them about [those matters].” 

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is now streaming on Apple TV+, with new episodes every Friday.

Photos: TPG News/Click Photos, Apple TV