Leslie Jones on her badass pirate in Our Flag Means Death: ‘Sign me up, I’ll do this for free!’
The HBO Max pirate comedy Our Flag Means Death starts out slow and accelerates fast. And a key part of its pivot from small-scale What We Do in the Shadows-style humor about inept, self-important sailors to a bigger, broader story arrives when Saturday Night Live veteran Leslie Jones shows up as Spanish Jackie, the undisputed queen of the Republic of Pirates. The story is based on the real-life partnership between Blackbeard (Thor: Ragnarok director Taika Waititi) and “gentleman pirate” Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), but the show’s aesthetic leans hard into the larger-than-life pop-culture idea of pirates, complete with grand adventures, grotesque violence, and swashbuckling style.
Jones tells Polygon that this image of pirates was a big part of the appeal in taking the role. “My agent sent it over and said, ‘They’re really interested in having you play this pirate,’” she says. “I was like, ‘Oh, I’m on!’ As soon as they said ‘pirate,’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? I get to wear pirate boots? Yes, for sure.’ They told me ‘Spanish Jackie has a wooden hand and like 20 husbands.’ I was like, ‘Sign me up, I’ll do this for free!’”
And sure enough, she did get those pirate boots she signed on for: “I got nice Rick James boots,” she cackles. “The ones that go up to theknee.”
Spanish Jackie, who first shows up in episode 3 and memorably re-emerges as the season’s plotlines coalesce, is a ruthless bar owner with a longstanding grudge against one of Stede’s sailors. Fred Armisen plays Geraldo, her head bartender and one of her many hapless husbands. When a few sailors from the main cast re-enter Jackie’s life and her bar, she gets a grand entrance, complete with her own ominous theme music and a slow, dramatic zoom in to the table
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