Steve Buscemi shares theory on what happened to Mr. Pink

By Megan Armstrong | Last updated 6/30/21

Quentin Tarantino's run as a dominant director and writer in Hollywood began in earnest with Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), and Steve Buscemi was there for both.

Buscemi thinks his two characters in the Tarantino-verse are intertwined.

"What I thought was cool about [playing Buddy Holly in Pulp Fiction]—I don't know if anybody else thinks about this, but because my character of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs was such a cheapskate and he didn't like to tip, I thought it was poetic justice that my next film with Quentin that I played a waiter," he said on The Late Late Show with James Corden on Tuesday (June 29).

The 63-year-old actor continued: "I even like to think maybe Mr. Pink got away somehow in Reservoir Dogs, and he's hiding out as the Buddy Holly waiter, and he probably gets tipped terribly. That's his fate."

At the end of Tarantino's first crime thriller, Buscemi's Mr. Pink is the only one who possibly survivor of a diamond heist gone terribly wrong—though his true fate is left up in the air. Were there police waiting for him outside the warehouse, or did he really make off with the diamonds scot-free?

Watch Buscemi's full interview with Corden below, where he also dished on the upcoming third season of Miracle Workers on TBS.