Yes, it’s true. White British actor Joseph Fiennes, the younger brother of Ralph Fiennes, has been cast as Michael Jackson in an upcoming U.K. TV film.
Now, debate is raging among critics and on social media that the casting choice is yet another sign that the film and TV industries in Hollywood and the United Kingdom are horribly tone deaf to concerns about the lack of diversity in opportunities on screen and behind the scenes.
The Guardian reports that “Shakespeare in Love” star Fiennes will play the African-American King of Pop in a comedic adaptation of a magazine story about one the strangest road trips in history: an alleged journey made by Jackson, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando after flights were cancelled following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
As the story goes, Taylor and Brando were in Manhattan to attend a Jackson concert at Madison Square Garden. After the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, commercial air travel was shut down for three days, so the three rented a car to get home to California. They only made it as far as Ohio, with many stops along the way at fast food restaurants to keep Brando happy. Stockard Channing will play Taylor, and Brian Cox will play Brando.
Questions over whether such a road trip is more urban legend than established fact are not taking center stage in articles and posts about the film, “Elizabeth, Michael and Marlon,” which is set to premiere later this year.
It’s the fact that the filmmakers apparently didn’t bother to look for any black actors to play Jackson.
“Joseph Fiennes as Michael Jackson is a symptom of a deeper sickness that moviemakers are only now beginning to treat,” writes Stereo Williams of the Daily Beast Tuesday.
The “sickness” Williams refers to is Hollywood’s diversity problem. The sickness became all too apparent with the all-white list of nominees this year for Academy Awards in the acting categories, and in the fact that films such as “Creed,” “Straight Outta Compton” and “Beasts of No Nation” were shut out of nominations for its black contributors.
The controversy is fueling the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, prompted players like Will Smith, Jada Pinkett Smith and Spike Lee to refuse to appear at the Feb. 28 ceremony and caused the Academy to revamp its membership system. It also prompted white European actors Charlotte Rampling, Michael Caine and Julie Delpy to get into hot water for saying stupid things and shrugging off concerns about diversity.
Fiennes didn’t address the casting choice in an interview, only saying the film is a “comedy” and the script is a “challenge,” according to Williams.
“This movie won’t be the final say on this subject, but as it happens, it adds fuel to a very necessary conversation,” Williams writes. “Here’s hoping major film studios in both America and Britain pay closer attention to that conversation and do more than pay lip service to those initiating it.
And here’s hoping we don’t get a Ralph Fiennes cameo as Jermaine.”
Martha Ross provides celebrity commentary for the Bay Area News Group. Follow her at twitter.com/marthajross.
