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Joseph Fiennes has been cast as Michael Jackson in “Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon”, a one-off, half-hour comedy from UK TV network Sky.
The film will centre on the road trip that Jackson and friends Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando allegedly took from New York to Ohio following the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The trip has been written about in Vanity Fair, however some of Taylor’s friends claim she never went on the trip.
Stockard Channing is on board to play Elizabeth Taylor and Brian Cox will play Marlon Brando.
The casting of a white man to play the African-American singer comes at a controversial time, with the lack of diversity in film a hot topic amidst the Oscar debate at the moment.
“I’m a white, middle-class guy from London … I’m as shocked as you may be,” Fiennes told EW. “[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.”
Written by Neil Forsyth, “Elizabeth, Michael & Marlon” is directed by Ben Palmer and will air later this year on the Sky Arts channel.
