Samuel L. Jackson has long been one of President Barack Obama’s most enthusiastic and outspoken celebrity supporters, but he had some harsh words for the Commander-in-Chief in a recent, candid interview with Playboy magazine.
In a no-hold-barred exchange, which also touches on Jackson’s love-hate relationship with his Oldboy director Spike Lee, the 64-year-old called out the president for being too timid.
“First of all, we know it ain’t because of his blackness, so I say stop trying to ‘relate,'” Jackson said. “Be a leader. Be f**king presidential. Look, I grew up in a society where I could say ‘It ain’t’ or ‘What it be’ to my friends. But when I’m out presenting myself to the world as me, who graduated from college, who had family who cared about me, who has a well-read background, I f**king conjugate.”
Jackson hasn’t been shy about expressing his political and personal views on a variety of subjects. He is an infamously honest tweeter and during the 2012 campaign season he starred in a subversive (and foul-mouthed) pro-Obama ad in which he parodied his popular audio reading of the children’s book Go the F**k to Sleep.
He also reportedly helped raise $10 million for the president during his 2008 campaign for the presidency.
Last year, the Django Unchained actor predicted that Obama would grow more radical and “scary” if he won four more years in office. But the Academy-Award-nominated star has become disillusioned since then.
“He got a little heated about the kids getting killed in Newtown and about the gun law,” Jackson told Playboy. “He’s still a safe dude. But with those Republicans, we’re now in a situation where even if he said, ‘I want to give you motherf**kers a raise,’ they’d go, ‘F**k you! We don’t want a raise!’ … How do we fix the fact that politicians aren’t trying to serve the people, they’re just trying to serve their party and their closed ideals?”