Rosanna Arquette says Quentin Tarantino’s use of N-word in Pulp Fiction is ‘racist and creepy’ | Film

Pulp Fiction and Desperately Seeking Susan star Rosanna Arquette has said she found Quentin Tarantino’s use of the N-word in Pulp Fiction to be “racist and creepy”.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Arquette said of the film, in which she plays the tattooed and pierced wife to Eric Stoltz’s syringe-wielding drug dealer: “It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels. But personally I am over the use of the N-word – I hate it. I cannot stand that [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass.”

She added: “It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”

Pulp Fiction, released in 1994 and for which Tarantino won the Cannes Palme d’Or and the Oscar for best original screenplay, uses the N-word on multiple occasions, including several times by Jimmie, the character played by Tarantino.

Tarantino has been criticised regularly for his liberal use of the term in subsequent films. In 1997 fellow director Spike Lee said in an interview with Variety that [Tarantino] was “infatuated with that word”, adding: “What does he want to be made – an honorary black man?” Tarantino was subsequently defended by Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown star Samuel L Jackson, who said in a Berlin film festival press conference: “It’s not offensive in the context of this film … [Jackie Brown] is a pretty good black film, I don’t think Spike’s made one of those in a few years.”

After the release of Tarantino’s 2012 period thriller Django Unchained, starring Jamie Foxx, Lee again criticised Tarantino, saying on social media: “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust.” Training Day director Antoine Fuqua responded by saying that he did not believe Tarantino had “a racist bone in his body”.

Tarantino defended himself in a 2015 interview with Bret Easton Ellis in the New York Times, saying: “In a lot of the more ugly pieces, my motives were really brought to bear in the most negative way. It’s like I’m some supervillain coming up with this stuff.”

In the same interview, Arquette said that she refused Harvey Weinstein’s sexual advances in the early 1990s and she believed her career subsequently suffered. “I was fortunate because I was not raped. But, boy, was it going there and I paid a price for saying no.” Arquette was among the original interviewees speaking out against Weinstein in the 2017 exposés in the New York Times and the New Yorker, adding: “Later I paid a price for telling the truth.”