In the final edit of the film, Jackson said, audiences are given a different version of his character, Carl Lee Hailey, than he had originally anticipated.
“When I saw it, I was sitting there like, What the fuck?” Jackson said. “But also the things they took out kept me from getting an Oscar. Really, motherfuckers? You just took that shit from me?”
From there, the actor mentioned a specific scene in which his character’s words had “the whole fucking set” crying. While that scene gave him confidence in the direction of his performance, it did not make its way into the film. Jackson, however, chalked this up to A Time to Kill—also featuring Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock—being intended as a star vehicle for someone else.
