Samuel L. Jackson was not the first choice to play Lieutenant Colonel Preston Packard in ‘Kong: Skull Island’.
The 68-year-old actor has earned many plaudits for his performance as the Vietnam War veteran who becomes obsessed with killing the giant ape in the blockbuster but ‘Whiplash’ star J.K. Simmons was wanted ahead of him to play the army man.
Simmons was unable to join the cast of ‘Kong: Skull Island’ due to scheduling conflicts leaving the part to Jackson, but he doesn’t care about being second choice because it’s a common thing in Hollywood for all actors.
In an interview with the Metro newspaper, he said: "I wasn’t the first choice for ‘Kong: Skull Island’. That was actually J.K. Simmons. I don’t care. A job’s a job. When I first arrived in Hollywood, every script I ever touched had Denzel Washington or Laurence Fishburne or somebody else’s fingerprints on it. It was fine. If they don’t want to do it, somebody’s got to do it. You still want to make the movie with me? Great let’s do it."
Although some of the shooting locations for ‘Kong’ were tough to cope with due to the extreme weather conditions Vietnam, Hawaii and Australia, Jackson enjoyed the shoot especially as some of the spots in Hawaii where they filmed were the same as the locations for his 1993 film ‘Jurassic Park’.
Jackson – who stars in ‘Kong: Skull Island’ with Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson – said: "It seems like they went out their way to make us uncomfortable. It was hot, it was buggy, in some cases muggy. We’d shoot in a big bamboo forest with the bamboos really close together so you had to elbow your way through it. Then you’d walk through some streams and get your feet wet for the day and you’d be like, ‘Damn!’ It was funny because in Hawaii, we were shooting where they shot ‘Jurassic Park’. We’d see people driving by in these RVs with their ‘Jurassic Park’ hats on doing the tour. We’d hear, ‘And now we’re going to the raptor pen,’ and they’d be staring at us wondering, ‘Who are those guys?’ "
Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t first choice for Kong: Skull Island role
