Sam Rubin won’t be picking a fight with Nick Fury anytime soon. The seasoned entertainment reporter for KTLA caused actor Samuel L. Jackson to fly into a rage on Monday, Feb. 10 when he confused him with Matrix star Laurence Fishburne.
“Working for Marvel, the Super Bowl commercial, did you get a lot of reaction to that Super Bowl commercial?” Rubin asked Jackson.
“What Super Bowl commercial?” Jackson replied.
After a moment of awkward silence, Rubin realized his mistake before Jackson erupted, “See, you’re as crazy as the people on Twitter. I’m not Laurence Fishburne! We don’t all look alike! We may be all black and famous, but we don’t look alike.”
Fishburne appeared in a buzzed-about Kia ad where he reprised his iconic role as Morpheus from The Matrix. And Jackson was immediately upset by the mix up.
“You’re the entertainment reporter?! And you don’t know the difference between me and Laurence Fishburne? There must be a very short line for your job,” he continued as Rubin attempted to turn the conversation back to Jackson’s RoboCop remake. “I’m the ‘What’s in your wallet’ black guy. And I’ve actually never done a McDonalds or a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial. I know that’s surprising.”
Rubin tried to laugh off what he called the “well-deserved spanking,” but later acknowledged, “That is a tape now that I believe is going to have a life all of its own.”
The longtime reporter issued an official apology via KTLA, but it’s unclear as to whether Rubin is actually owning up to his faux pas.
“I indicated to Samuel that I’d seen him during the Super Bowl, and he thought that I had confused him with the commercial Laurence Fishburne had done for a car company,” Rubin said. “Of course a Captain America ad had also run during the Super Bowl, but I immediately felt so dumb, I didn’t bring that up — and he gave me the shellacking that was well deserved.”
If Rubin had been referring to the Captain America commercial, he made no indication of it throughout the interview. He concluded his statement, writing, “I pride myself on the fact — that unlike a lot of people who do this kind of work — more often than not, I really do know what I’m talking about. But I didn’t 30 minutes ago, and I’m really embarrassed about it, and I very much apologize to Samuel L. Jackson and anyone else who was offended for what was a very amateur mistake.”
