The Hateful Eight star talks about his frequent director’s use of the racial slur and constantly encountering "people who want to nitpick this whole nigger thing," as he told BuzzFeed News.

Jason Merritt / Getty Images Samuel L. Jackson at the premiere of The Hateful Eight at ArcLight Cinemas Cinerama Dome on Dec. 7.

Samuel L. Jackson took a long, slow drag from his ornate black and gold vape pen, cocked his head to the side, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Then, he snapped his head to the forefront, and braced himself, knowingly. The veteran actor was already aware of where his conversation with BuzzFeed News was about to go next. But Jackson — the star of Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming movie The Hateful Eight and the director’s frequent collaborator — was ready for it. “Once again, I’m sure there will be people who want to nitpick this whole nigger thing,” Jackson drawled inside a Beverly Hills hotel one recent Saturday afternoon. “But it ain’t like that ain’t the time.” The Hateful Eight is another Tarantino period piece starring Jackson (see also Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, and Django Unchained). It’s set in Wyoming, a few years after the Civil War, and racial tensions are still high. Jackson plays Major Marquis Warren, a bounty hunter who fought in the war. “Occasionally somebody goes, ‘that black fellow,’ or ‘black major,’” Jackson said of the way his character is described onscreen. “But ‘black major’ sounds [as bad as] nigger.”

The Weinstein Company Jackson in The Hateful Eight.

Marquis is the lone black guy for the most part in The Hateful Eight. The Oscar-nominated actor described him as “an interesting and colorful, and kind of smart and very dangerous guy. Kind of hard to find that combination.” Then, Jackson added with a chuckle, “The whole blue and gray of the war didn’t really matter that much to him. It was kind of like, I get to kill some white people? Really? OK! I’m good with that.” True to Tarantino form, The Hateful Eight’s language is rich — in some scenes, the dialogue is almost as dangerous as the guns some of the cowboys are toting. (Marquis has a rather unforgettable flashback scene where words are in fact, the true assassin.) Tarantino is, however, often raked for his frequent use of the n-word; some viewers thought it was so excessive that they counted how many times — 110, to be exact — it was used in Django Unchained, his 2012 film about a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Jamie Foxx) who was determined to find his also enslaved wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

Charley Gallay / Getty Images for The Weinstein Company Jackson and Tarantino at The Hateful Eight press conference in Beverly Hills on Dec. 5.

But Jackson surmises that even if The Hateful Eight’s characters didn’t use the slur as often as they do — and it is a great deal — it’d still sting as much as it does. But does the director push it too far when it comes to using the n-word? Jackson said no; Tarantino is just being authentic. “Quentin captures the language of who those people are and what their time is,” he said. And Jackson would know. He was born in Washington D.C., grew up in a segregated Chattanooga, Tennessee, and attended Atlanta’s Morehouse College, a historically black college that also counts civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. as an alum. Jackson, who even served as an usher in the famous leader’s funeral, understands the space and time Marquis comes from. “I know from growing up in the South that white people talk about you like you ain’t in the room,” Jackson said. “When they say [the n-word], they’re just saying it so you know who they’re talking about because you can’t mistake who they’re talking about. Ain’t nobody else there!” On the set of The Hateful Eight, the actors and crew existed in their own world — Tarantino didn’t allow cell phones — allowing the cast to engage with one another in a more intimate way. So, when it came to Jackson’s co-stars — Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Bruce Dern, Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and Channing Tatum — spewing the n-word at him throughout the film’s three-plus-hour runtime, he wasn’t uncomfortable.

The Weinstein Company Russell and Jackson in The Hateful Eight.