With the entertainment industry currently embroiled in a debate over the lack of diversity in film, UK pay TV network Sky Arts may have picked the wrong time to announce that British actor Joseph Fiennes will play pop icon Michael Jackson in a new half-hour comedy special.
The project, "Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon," will center around an unlikely road trip that Jackson and friends Elizabeth Taylor (Stockard Channing) and Marlon Brando (Brian Cox) allegedly took from New York to Ohio in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
In a statement regarding Fiennes' casting, Sky Arts said, "'Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon' is a Sky Arts comedy which takes a light-hearted look at a reportedly true event; Joseph Fiennes is cast as Michael Jackson. It is part of a series of comedies about unlikely stories from arts and cultural history. Sky Arts gives producers the creative freedom to cast roles as they wish, within the diversity framework which we have set."
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Michael tried his best to be white.
ReplyDeleteHe wasn't very good at it.
DeletePeople are trying to use the 1993 MJ interview with Oprah to say he would be horrified.
ReplyDeleteI didn't hear it that way. I think Michael was simply saying he never requested a white child play him as a child in a commercial, that he was proud to be a Black American and wasn't denying his blackness. I think what horrified him was the rumor that he had asked for that. I think he was a lot more open than the people criticizing this. If Fiennes does a good job, MJ would probably be proud.
An actor that could accurately portray Mikey would have to be a mixed white black (mostly white) girl-boy in sufficient proportions that you can't really tell race or gender. That is going to be tough to find, Mikey was one of a kind.
ReplyDeleteAll I care about right now is the upcoming Hank Williams movie "I saw the light".British actor Tom Hiddelston plays Williams to perfection,but one might wonder why an American couldn't be cast to play an icon like Hank Williams.
ReplyDelete"creative freedom to cast roles as they wish, within the diversity framework which we have set."
ReplyDeleteWhoa, what??
"Diversity framework"? So they can cast however they wish, as long as they have the required number of blacks or other "minorities"...? And as long as the bad guy isn't black, that is. He has to be a "good guy", always. It's the rule.
And he usually gets killed being "a good guy". That's the other part of it.
Did he marry any black women? Nope.
ReplyDeleteDid he have any all-black children? Nope.
Did he look like a white marionette for the latter half of his life? Yep.
It's a movie. And a comedy. Get over it.
4:31 PM
ReplyDeleteThey'd have a hard time finding someone as gaunt as Hank. Most of today's Hollywood guys are of the beefcake variety.
I don't see whites complaining about blacks doing a version of the Wizard of OZ ?....THE WIZ.
ReplyDeleteGood point 7:06.
ReplyDeleteWill they give a black actor a Oscar for the white actor?
ReplyDelete