‘it’s not the context dude’

Samuel L. Jackson has dismissed Joe Rogan’s apology over his past use of the N-word.

In a new interview with The Sunday Times, the actor discussed the podcast host recently coming under fire over resurfaced clips of him using racial slurs on The Joe Rogan Experience, per Insider. In an apology, Rogan said clips of him using the N-word were taken out of context and that in the past, “when I would bring that word up, if it would come up in conversations, instead of saying ‘the N-word,’ I would just say the word.” 

But Jackson told The Sunday Times, “He is saying nobody understood the context when he said it. But he shouldn’t have said it. It’s not the context, dude — it’s that he was comfortable doing it. Say that you’re sorry because you want to keep your money, but you were having fun and you say you did it because it was entertaining.” 

The clips of Rogan using racial slurs resurfaced after he was already under fire for COVID-19 misinformation spread on his podcast, leading artists like Neil Young to pull out of Spotify. Rogan offered his “sincere and humble” apologies for his past use of the N-word, saying he “never used it to be racist.” But he later said the video compilation was a “political hit job” and complained that “they’re taking all this stuff that I’ve ever said that’s wrong and smushing it all together.” 

Rogan during his apology also said one instance of him using the N-word was during a discussion about the word’s use in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. Jackson, a frequent Tarantino collaborator, told the Sunday Times, “Every time someone wants an example of overuse of the N-word, they go to Quentin — it’s unfair. He’s just telling the story and the characters do talk like that.” But using the N-word “just to elicit a laugh,” Jackson said, is “wrong.”