It is better late than never ! Six years after the huge controversy that the English series “Urban Myths” sparked by choosing Joseph Fiennes to play Michael Jackson, the English actor has finally decided to do his mea culpa.
Indeed, the actor recognized a “serious error”. “I think people are absolutely right to be angry,” he said in an interview published on Sunday June 11 by the Guardian. “It was a bad decision”, he admitted.
As a reminder, in 2016, the simple trailer for the episode had triggered such an outcry that the producers of the series had finally decided never to broadcast the episode in question! At the time, in the midst of the #OscarsSoWhite controversy, on the under-representation of black personalities among the nominees of the 2016 edition, many Internet users had expressed themselves on Twitter to tear down the choice of the actor, but also the way he had been made up. And for good reason, in the trailer, Joseph Fiennes appeared decked out in a nasal prosthesis while his skin had been bleached.
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An episode never aired
“It happened at a time when there was a movement, a change that was beneficial,” confided Joseph Fiennes to our colleagues across the Channel. And to add about the episode: “It was a bad assessment. A serious mistake”. Finally, the 53-year-old wanted to clarify that he had asked the broadcasters to throw the episode. “There were heated discussions, but in the end people made the right decision,” he concluded.
LZ