Jackson shared how he joined Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show, learned who Mustard is, and remembered a Tupac moment on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

Samuel L. Jackson provided new details about his involvement in Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance during a Monday (Nov. 17) appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” The conversation saw him explaining how he joined the production. “When they called me and said, ‘Yeah, we’d really like for you to be part of Kendrick’s halftime show,’ it’s like, ‘Really?’” he said. The veteran actor accepted the invitation immediately: “They said, ‘We’ll send you a treatment or whatever.’ I said, ‘I don’t really care. I’ll be there.’”

The “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” star described arriving and realizing how much work had already gone into the show. “Watching the dancers go through the routines, it’s like, damn, they’ve been rehearsing for a while,” he noted. He also said he didn’t grasp the full scope of what was taking place until the dress rehearsal. Jackson added that many people already refer to him as “Uncle Sam” in everyday life, which he carried into the role.

One of the most memorable moments came when Jackson spoke about one of Lamar’s biggest collaborators. While discussing those he encountered on site, the actor described a piece of information that caught him entirely off guard: “I finally found out that there was a guy named Mustard, not just he was just yelling ‘mustard’… All that was new information for me.” The humorous comment was a presumed reference to Lamar’s signature ad-lib from the GNX standout “tv off.” The Mustard-produced number served as the halftime show’s closing track.