Samuel L Jackson praises wife of 41 years for giving him a 'chance' after shocking health battle
Samuel L Jackson has praised his wife of 41 years Broadway actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson for sticking by his side during years of addiction.
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The Marvel actor became addicted to drugs early on in his career and shared that he had "basically moved into the basement" of the family home, actling "like the troll in the basement".
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"She didn't have to try to fix me," he revealed of LaTanya, adding that "she could've just said, 'Get out,' and left me into the world, let me go and be whatever I was going to be".
"She gave me the chance to be the man I was supposed to be."
But speaking to People, the acclaimed Broadway star shared that she "couldn't do that because I felt as though God had spoken to me and said, 'Now, you can't leave this young man like this. Give him some help. And then, if you feel like leaving afterwards, we'll talk about it'".
"In the beginning, we always said the most revolutionary thing that Black people could do was stay together, raise their children with the nucleus of having a father and a mother, since everybody likes to pretend that that's not the dynamic of the African American family," LaTanya continued.
Samuel and his wife LaTonya
"That it's just children out here being raised by women, which we know is false."
She shared: "In order to change that narrative, we made a decision to say, 'We are going to stay together no matter what. We'll figure it out.'"
LaTanya was Tony nominated in 2014 for her work in A Raisin in the Sun but now the two have collaborated for the first time as producing partners on the Apple TV+ limited series The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey.
Samuel stars as the lead character who has dementia. "It was important for us to tell this story and show that there's a life inside these people that needs to be explored," revealed Samuel, whose grandfather had the disease.
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