Samuel L. Jackson talks "The Legend of Tarzan"

The Legend of Tarzan - #TarzanChallenge Week 6 (FINAL)

LOS ANGELES - The Legend of Tarzan, the latest in a long line of ape-man fantasy tales, is obviously a big Hollywood blockbuster.

But David Yates movie is also surprisingly serious, racially sophisticated and historically based on an actual African genocide. Just ask Samuel L. Jackson, the 67-year-old actor who plays the American character of George Washington Williams in Tarzan.

When I spoke to David and we started to talk about George Washington Williams, it was my first time hearing about it, Jackson tells a Hollywood press conference as the Tarzan movie gears up for its Friday debut. Hes a real guy? So, all of a sudden I realized: Okay, so Im not just playing some adventure guys with a pair of big guns." Im playing a really important person who had a raison detre for being there!

Jackson plunged into researching the unique history of Williams, a veteran of the Civil War as a teenaged soldier on the Union side. Williams later became a mercenary in the Mexican revolutionary war, then a U.S. army soldier in the disgraceful Indian Wars. Jackson found that history fascinating, partly because of the contradictions of Williams career as soldier, priest, historian, journalist and finally as an informal U.S. government representative in Africa in the late 1880s.

He was a bit of a rogue, too, Jackson says. He wasnt just a straight-up guy. He lied and gave himself titles that he didnt have. He was a black person trying to make it in that particular world at that particular time and he was able to do that through grit and guile.

How exactly does this relate to Tarzan? In the movie, the Tarzan story is spun out against the real-life background of how Belgiums King Leopold II personally organized an invasion force to take over the Congo basin, establishing what was laughably called the Congo Free State in 1885. What Leopolds agents and troops did was murder tens of thousands of Congolese on a program of terror that also subjugated tribal groups and introduced extreme segregation and forced labour, recreating the worst excesses of U.S. slavery.

In the movie, George Washington Williams teams up with Tarzan to expose the genocide and to organize African peoples and wild animals to fight back. In real life, obviously without Tarzan, Williams was the first major voice to sound the alarm in Europe and the U.S.

So Im really proud that David gave me that opportunity, Jackson says of playing Williams opposite Alexander Skarsgards Tarzan.

Jackson later visited Williams burial site in Blackpool, England, while shooting the next Tim Burtons Miss Peregrine"s Home for Peculiar Children. Williams had died of tuberculosis and pleurisy in England in 1891 at the age of 41, after returning from his humanitarian mission.

I actually got to see his grave, Jackson explains, which was kind of profound and moving for me. Hopefully, I have done some justice to this particular character. Hopefully, people will be intrigued enough by him to investigate who he really was, and what he did find out (in the Congo), and the things that he actually stood for.

Twitter: @Bruce_Kirkland

BKirkland@postmedia.com

Source: http://www.torontosun.com/2016/06/27/samuel-l-jackson-talks-the-legend-of-tarzan