Casting of Joseph Fiennes, a White Guy, as Michael Jackson Sparks Twitter Outrage
Sometime after the tragic events of 9/11, Michael Jackson, Liz Taylor and the love of my life, Marlon Brando, took a road trip to get away from ground zero, to leave New York… someone heard about it and decided to make a movie about it. Why? Because it’s a fucking brilliant idea. But all the more unnerving when the realization strikes that this could be as bad, if not worse, than the travesty of a Lifetime movie, Liz & Dick.
Casting call came around and by the grace of someone itching to stir up a controversy, white British man, Joseph Fiennes was cast as Michael. As such, Twitter freaked out, as Twitter does and the world kept turning.
BREAKING: To make this whole "white guy playing Michael Jackson in a TV movie" thing right they've cast an Asian woman to play Marlon Brando
— Steve Zaragoza (@stevezaragoza) January 27, 2016
They seriously couldn't find a black actor to play Michael Jackson?
— deray (@deray) January 27, 2016
Now I can get mad. I get mad. It’s what I do. It’s the reason all my doctors and various specialists believe that I will have a heart attack at a young age and it’s the reason I became a writer, but I’m not mad.
The movie is set in 2001. While a black man can never become a white man, in 2001, Michael Jackson had an extraordinarily fair complexion that became his signature look for my generation. This is a full-length biopic about the life of MJ, it’s a picture about a particular time in his life in which he looked a very certain way.
Would critics rather see a black man whitewashed with creative lighting and prosthetics? I’m concerned with bringing people of color into movies of opportunity, not to be pushed to the sidelines and cast in poorly executed flop flicks… which is how this feels. I’m all for being told I’m wrong. I’m all for finding some reasons here to be angry, but I have failed to see a reason yet. Enlighten me.
