Mere weeks after The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was pummeled by the Internet for #OscarsSoWhite, we’ve got another story that is so head spinning, we can’t believe that it’s real. But don’t worry, it’s real.
Joseph Fiennes will play the late Michael Jackson in a road trip movie involving the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
To be clear, this is the same Joseph Fiennes who hails from England, is the brother of Ralph Fiennes, and starred in the Oscar Best Picture winning film Shakespeare in Love. He will be playing Michael Jackson, the famed African American pop singer.
If the project weren’t weird enough, it will also be set in the days that followed the most prominent and tragic day in the history of our country. The film will be a short TV special, of the half-hour variety, written by Neil Forsyth for the British network Sky Arts. So we’re not talking about a major motion picture, but still, very weird.
The story is based on an urban legend or sorts. A 2011 Vanity Fair article reported a story in which Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando made the cross-country roadtrip from New York to Los Angeles together following the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In a story that was later debunked by members of Elizabeth Taylor’s staff, it was reported that Taylor and Brando had been invited to Jackson’s show on September 10, 2011. Following the attacks that leveled the World Trade Center the next morning, an incident that grounded air travel across the country, the trio were said to have rented a car so that they might make their way back to the west coast.
The surreal account of the original story involves the following passage, which is almost too unbelievable:
A former employee of Michael Jackson’s says that Michael, like General Washington, led his entourage to a temporary safe haven in New Jersey, before the three superstars took to the open road. “They actually got as far as Ohio—all three of them, in a car they drove themselves!” he recalls. Brando allegedly annoyed his traveling companions by insisting on stopping at nearly every KFC and Burger King they passed along the highway. One can only imagine the shock their appearance caused at gas stations and rest stops across America.
The TV movie will also star Grease‘s Stockard Channing as Elizabeth Taylor and X-Men‘s Brian Cox as a Burger King-loving Marlon Brando.
There’s a lot to unpack with a story such as this. On one hand, it’s not a great look for any film, especially in today’s climate, to be casting a white actor to play Michael Jackson. Then again, we have to remember that 2011 Michael Jackson was much further along in life. It was a time in his life in which he was greatly afflicted by vitiligo, a disease that caused him to lose the pigment in his skin. After a bit of uproar on the Internet about the casting of a white actor to play Jackson, Fiennes responded via an interview with Entertainment Tonight: “[Jackson] definitely had an issue — a pigmentation issue — and that’s something I do believe. He was probably closer to my color than his original color.”
Next: The Real Reason Why The Oscars Are So White
Is this problematic? Yeah, I can see how it’s an offensive bit of stunt casting. But Fiennes also has a bit of a point about Jackson’s skin color later in life. What would be worse, finding a light-skinned black actor and further lightening their skin through make-up? Or finding a white actor to play Michael Jackson? Neither are particularly good ideas. This entire project is absurd to begin with.
That said, the response from the Internet has been very entertaining:
Joseph Fiennes can play Michael Jackson. (A real person). But Idris can't play James Bond (a fake spy for a fake agency)? Cool, cool, cool.
— Prentice Penny (@The_A_Prentice) January 27, 2016
This is one opinion that I agree with wholeheartedly. Idris Elba should play James Bond.
The situation has enraged, but it’s also been the source of some good comedy. Actor Orlando Jones had a few other suggestions, based on this casting:
I'm TOTALLY on board with Joseph Fiennes playing Michael Jackson IF AND ONLY IF Angela Bassett is cast as Elizabeth Taylor
— Orlando Jones (@TheOrlandoJones) January 27, 2016
BREAKING NEWS – Alfre Woodard cast as Queen Elizabeth in new series from Amazon Studios.
— Orlando Jones (@TheOrlandoJones) January 27, 2016
EXCLUSIVE – Idris Elba confirmed to play Winston Churchill in historical drama about the Battle of the Bulge
— Orlando Jones (@TheOrlandoJones) January 27, 2016
TRENDING ON FACEBOOK – George Lopez set to play @realDonaldTrump in biopic HUGE directed by Charlie Kaufman
— Orlando Jones (@TheOrlandoJones) January 27, 2016
I’m a big fan of Hamilton, the hip-hop musical rendition of Alexander Hamilton’s life. None of these ideas sound particularly bad to me. As for this Michael Jackson 9/11 road trip movie, we’ll see what it looks like when Sky Arts eventually airs it.
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