Apple cider vinegar Is Pilates for you? 'Ambient gaslighting' 'Main character energy'
TV
Joseph Fiennes

Joseph Fiennes plays Michael Jackson in British TV 'road-trip' comedy

Maria Puente
USA TODAY
Joseph Fiennes in January 2015, in Park City, Utah.

Gobsmacking news out of London Wednesday: British actor Joseph Fiennes plays the late Michael Jackson in a forthcoming British TV comedy about a story involving Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando widely considered an urban myth in the USA.

Fiennes, 45, is a well-regarded actor, a BAFTA winner and a SAG nominee, and best remembered as Shakespeare in Oscar-winning Shakespeare in Love. But he was born 12 years after Jackson and is way more pale than Jackson was even at the height of his vitigilo skin-blotching condition.

And in case you missed it earlier, another white British actor, Charlie Hunnam (TV's Sons of Anarchy), has been cast to play a real-life Mexican-American drug lord in a movie called American Drug Lord.

So, what's up with these casting choices? Are they just cases of really bad timing in light of the current hand-wringing over the lack of diversity in Oscar nominations and Hollywood in general?

Fiennes was cast and the project was filmed before talk of an Oscar boycott blew up this month. But the project is being held up as emblematic of the diversity problem by critics of the entertainment industry's standard practices.

Abigail Tye, a spokeswoman for Sky Arts, which is making Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon, confirmed Wednesday what had been reported in London the night before: Fiennes plays Jackson in a "lighthearted look at a reportedly true event" to be broadcast on Sky later in 2016.

What event? Allegedly, after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Taylor, Brando and Jackson were stuck in New York and wanted to go home but all flights were grounded. So the trio hopped in a car and took to the road, getting as far as Ohio after frequent stops so that Brando could feast on fast food.

So, a wacky road-trip story involving real people, all now dead and unable to defend themselves.

Michael Jackson in March 2009 a few months before his death.

Although this story has been debunked, it's still kicking around thanks to attention from the likes of Vanity Fair and other media.

"I think the casting is inspired, actually," enthused Sam Kashner, the writer of the 2011 Vanity Fair story about the alleged road trip, according to an email he to sent to the magazine Wednesday. "Sometimes life isn't just stranger than fiction, it's fiction’s muse!”

Kashner believes the Liz-and-Marlon-and-Michael tale is too good for producers, or British producers anyway, to ignore.

“There's something just so irresistible about simply the image of this holy trinity in the car together," he said in his email "It's a kind of comic misrule flight-out-of-Egypt story, and a tale told out of the celebrity Bible that should go on forever.”

Fiennes told The Guardian in London that the story might be urban myth but if it did happen, it might have gone something like this.

“It’s a fun, lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek road trip of what celebrity of that kind is like," he said. "But also it’s rather beautiful and poignant about their relationships.”

Even if it's bogus? No matter, according to Sky Arts.

Elizabeth Taylor with her close pal, Michael Jackson, in January 1993 at the American Music Awards in Los Angeles.

The half-hour "one-off" comedy will be "part of a series of comedies about unlikely stories from arts and cultural history," Tye said. "Sky Arts gives producers the creative freedom to cast roles as they wish, within the diversity framework which we have set."

Unlikely, indeed. For some observers, it's unbelievable for other reasons, especially now.

"This news is not coming from The Onion. I repeat: This is really happening," huffed Yesha Callahan on The Root, the website that covers black news, culture and politics.

"Kanye West once sang, 'She got a light-skinned friend, look like Michael Jackson,' but this is just ridiculous," their headline read.

"But who cares about the story, right? Why in the world is a white man playing Michael Jackson? Did they also cast a black man as Marlon Brando? Or an Asian woman as Elizabeth Taylor? Of course not," Callahan wrote.

Scottish actor Brian Cox, 69, will play Brando and American Stockard Channing, 71, will play Taylor.

"While the premise of the film sounds like it could give a rare and fascinating glimpse into Jackson’s private life, one can’t help but be stuck on the fact that one of the greatest African-American musicians of all time will be played by a white man," reported another black-oriented website, The Grio. "We are truly at a loss for words."

The reaction on Twitter was similarly skeptical, sometimes funny, sometimes profane.

Featured Weekly Ad