Samuel L. Jackson got here near demise over 30 years in the past.
Whereas showing on Tuesday’s episode of Paloma Religion’s “Mad Sad Bad” podcast, the 76-year-old actor recalled the time he “got dragged by a subway train in New York” and almost died.
“I was in the middle door of the last car, and it was a long-ass train station,” Jackson defined. “And when the door closed on my foot, [the] train took off. So I’m sitting there thinking, I’m like, ‘Oh, f ‑ ‑ k, I’m going to die.’”
“I could see the tunnel coming,” Jackson continued, “and I couldn’t figure out anything that I could grab or hold on to and get close to the train so I wouldn’t get killed in the tunnel.”
However the practice “just slowed down really, really slow,” the “Pulp Fiction” star mentioned, including, “until all of a sudden the train stopped.”
Jackson beforehand advised Vainness Truthful that the incident occurred in December 1988. He defined that he stopped to assist a lady who dropped one thing when the subway doorways closed on his ankle, inflicting him to be dragged on the platform because the practice accelerated.
Jackson tore his ACL and meniscus, which led to him spending 10 months on crutches and over a yr in bodily rehab. He received $540,000 after suing the New York Transit Authority.
On the podcast, Jackson mentioned that he came upon who saved his life whereas he was in courtroom two years after the incident.
“The guy who pulled the emergency cord was on crutches,” he shared. “Everybody else in there was trying to open the door, get my foot out the door, push and push and pull and try and take my shoe off. And he was going to the emergency cord and he finally pulled it and stopped it.”
The “Avengers” actor recalled that when he was being dragged by the subway “all I could think of was, it was going to be a really sad Christmas, because it was like a few days before Christmas.”
“So I was going to miss my birthday and all that,” he mentioned. “I was like, ‘Damn, it’s gonna be f ‑ ‑ ked up. It’s gonna be a f ‑ ‑ ked up Christmas this year.’”
Jackson added of the near-death expertise, “That whole thing about your life passing before you, it’s like, ‘Eh, not really.’ Everything does slow down, though.”
“Things slow down when you’re looking at death,” he continued. “I’ve been in car accidents and if I see them, it’s almost like everything is slowing down and you know there’s nothing you can do to get out of the way.”
When requested if the incident made him “existential,” Jackson responded, “F ‑ ‑ k no, I’m Black.”
“I got my own problems, you know. Just being,” he went on. “I grew up in segregation, so I’ve been, you know, dealing with, you know, existential bulls – – t my whole life.”
