Quentin Tarantino has zero plans to stop using the N-word in his projects.
In fact, the director said audience members who take offense to the controversial word being used in his work are likely not people who should be watching in the first place.
Tarantino has come under fire for years by critics who have argued that he uses the racially charged term too excessively. Given the derogatory history of the slur, many of the director’s detractors have been unable to wrap their minds around the need for the N-word to appear in his projects, let alone for it to be repeatedly uttered by his actors.
The Hateful Eight director addressed the criticism he’s faced throughout his career for his opinions on the N-word in a recent appearance on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace.” The episode, aired on Nov. 18, did not become a talking point online until Variety ran a story recounting some of Tarantino’s history with the N-word.
“You talk about being the conductor and the audience being the orchestra, so when people say, ‘Well there’s too much violence in his movies. He uses the N-word too often.’ You say what?” Wallace asked, to which Tarantino answered with the terse, unapologetic response: “You should see something else. Then see something else. If you have a problem with my movies, then they aren’t the movies to go see. Apparently, I’m not making them for you.”
Multiple Black actors who have starred in his films have defended Tarantino against the backlash. Frequent collaborator Samuel L. Jackson once said the outrage over Tarantino’s use of the term “n**ger” is nonsense.
“It’s some bulls**t,” Jackson told Esquire in a 2019 feature. “You can’t just tell a writer he can’t talk, write the words, put the words in the mouths of the people from their ethnicities, the way that they use their words. You cannot do that, because then it becomes an untruth; it’s not honest. It’s just not honest.”
Jamie Foxx also came to the Kill Bill director’s defense years after the release of their 2012 cinematic effort Django Unchained. “I understood the text. The N-word was said 100 times, but I understood the text. That’s the way it was back in that time,” Foxx told Yahoo Entertainment in 2018.
Tarantino’s last film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, was released in 2019. He recently said he plans to make one more movie before making a career pivot.