Samuel L. Jackson On Why Bringing ‘Ptolemy Grey’ To The Screen Was Personal

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey is a very personal project for Samuel L. Jackson in several ways.

Firstly, the lead actor, and executive producer of the limited series, has been trying to bring the adaptation of the Walter Mosley novel to the screen for over a decade. Secondly, the main character suffers from dementia, a condition that has touched his family’s life many times.

I spoke to Jackson about the Apple TV+ show about a 91-year-old who takes a wonder drug that gives him the ability to remember everything and track down his nephew’s murderer. His experience with the project was a journey in itself.

Simon Thompson: Dominique Fishback, who plays Ptolemy’s caregiver, told me that you saw her in the movie Project Power on Netflix, and you recommended her for this role.

Samuel L. Jackson: I did but not realize that she was the same girl I’d met when she was doing a project with my wife in New York, Show Me A Hero. She jumped off the screen, and I started calling people and saying, ‘Okay, I found our found Robyn. I’ve found her.’

Thompson: This was a very important project for you. You’re very familiar with the book, and you’ve been trying to get this made for a long time, so how important was it to make sure that you’re acting opposite the right person? Not only because you want to get the best out of them, but because you want them to help you get the best out of yourself and compliment your performance.

Jackson: It’s not just the best out of myself but more about servicing the story in the way it needed to be serviced. I thought that about every actor that we were able to pull into this particular project. There are some young actors that we’ve never seen or haven’t seen enough of, there are some veteran actors that I’ve watched, and I was like, ‘I want that person. Let’s see if we can get him.’ We were very fortunate to get people that inhabited these roles in a way that gave the story its honesty and veracity. Look at people like Omar Benson Miller, who is this big caretaker for an old man that nobody else is taking care of. The conversations that they have, the facility of him being this great big person, and seeing how Ptolemy could break this big bear of a person when he’s having a personal moment and talking about his wife and kids takes the audience on another kind of trip. Then you have Walton Goggins come in and be this doctor that talks fast and has sincerity, but you know Ptolemy sees him as something else and refers to him by a specific name. Then you have all the women in this particular story, Sensia, Robyn, and Niecie, being the cause and effect people who move and propel the story in another way. To have a cast like that, to tell a particular story, I’m always looking to serve the story. I don’t always have that opportunity because I’m not always the producer, but to have a lot of say about who has a particular role or who gets to come in and tell the story meant a lot to me.

Thompson: You obviously have this connection with the book, and it was something that you connected with deeply. What did the adaptation as a limited series offer that you couldn’t get from doing it as a movie?

Jackson: There’s no way that you can tell a story that’s this intricate in an hour and a half or two hours. There are too many elements, too many things, that go into making this particular thing what it is. The time lapses alone do not allow for that. For the story to make sense for the audience, there’s a generational leapfrog that the story has to take. The nuance of every character, all the people that touch him and that he comes into contact with, you have to have some kind of intellectual context to understand why Ptolemy knew them and what that effect is on the end goal. When you add something as fantastic as a miracle cure for dementia that sounds like, ‘What?’ people will accept it and say, ‘Okay, wow. Look what it did.’ It gives him a moment of clarity that allows him to solve a problem that he’s been trying to solve, even in the dimness of his intellect. This one thing has been harping at him, and he finally gets to settle it.

Thompson: I lost my mother to dementia, so I’m always very interested now, having gone through that to see how it is depicted on TV and in movies. Is it something that has touched your own life that you could draw personal experience from?

Jackson: My grandfather, my mother, her brother, her sister, people on my father’s side, there are so many. I’ve been surrounded by the same thing. I watched the light go out in five or six people’s lives during my lifetime. I understand how that happened and the course of events that led to it and what it all meant until one day they’re just not there anymore. There’s also knowing that the core person who used to be my confidant and put their arms around me when I hurt, or when I felt something or that was proud of me when I made an achievement was still there sitting inside this person. We don’t know what’s on their mind. We don’t know what they absorb and what they don’t absorb. We know what we remember about them, whether they remember anything about us at all.

Thompson: How did you perfect the chemistry and the relationship between Dominique and yourself? She said that it started very early when you were doing tests over Zoom.

Jackson: I’m not sure. I try and let everyone know that film sets or acting situations are my happy place. I approach them from a place of joy, that no matter how serious or how intense the scene is, when it’s over, if it is done well, the first thing you want to hear out of my mouth is a laugh because you made me happy that we achieved this thing. We got to this place, and how amazing is that? I can’t wait for us to put it on something permanent. I let her know immediately that I was going praise her and have fun, and if we’re doing a scene where it’s crying when they say cut, we’re not going to keep crying. We’re going to stop and laugh and savor the fact that we got it right.

The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey premieres on Friday, March 11, 2022, with the two episodes. New episodes premiere weekly each following Friday.