A Fiennes Mess – Why the cast­ing of a new Michael Jack­son TV show has ruf­fled feathers

Dur­ing an infa­mous, tele­vised inter­view con­duct­ed at Michael Jackson’s Nev­er­land ranch in 1993, Oprah Win­frey dared to seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the self-styled ​“King of Pop” about a series of lurid per­son­al rumours. Jack­son gave short shrift to the sug­ges­tion that he slept in an oxy­gen tank, and was equal­ly dis­mis­sive of a sto­ry claim­ing that he’d pur­chased the bones of the Ele­phant Man, Joseph Merrick.

Jack­son reserved his most with­er­ing con­tempt, how­ev­er, for the idea that he want­ed a white child to por­tray him in a TV com­mer­cial. ​“That’s so stu­pid,” he sighed, before becom­ing vis­i­bly agi­tat­ed: ​“That’s the most ridicu­lous, hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ry I’ve ever heard. It’s crazy… it’s my face, it’s me when I was lit­tle. Why would I want a lit­tle white child to play me? I’m a black Amer­i­can, I’m proud to be a black Amer­i­can. I’m proud of my race. I am proud of who I am.”

Right up until his pass­ing in 2009, Jackson’s phys­i­cal appear­ance was huge­ly con­tro­ver­sial: he tran­si­tioned, in full pub­lic view, from a dark-skinned black boy with a majes­tic afro to a light-skinned, straight-haired debate-mag­net – a strange and dis­turb­ing jour­ney unmatched in pop­u­lar cul­ture. By way of expla­na­tion, Jack­son referred to the after-effects of the trau­mat­ic 1984 inci­dent in which his hair was set on fire while film­ing a Pep­si com­mer­cial, and cit­ed the need to cov­er up his vitili­go, a con­di­tion which caus­es blotch­es on the skin. (Jack­son also admit­ted to hav­ing under­gone plas­tic surgery, a fact obvi­ous even to casu­al observers.)

Some pun­dits appor­tioned the extrem­i­ty of Jackson’s altered appear­ance to a man­i­fes­ta­tion of self-hate – ​“The hope­less task of sculpt­ing and bleach­ing your­self into a sim­u­lacrum of a white man sug­gests a pro­found loathing of black­ness,” spec­u­lat­ed Newsweek’s David Gates in 1999 – while one of the most mem­o­rable scenes in David O Russell’s Gulf War dra­ma, Three Kings, used Jackson’s ghoul­ish appear­ance as a pop-psy­cho­log­i­cal light­ning rod for explor­ing geopo­lit­i­cal con­flict: ​“Your sick fuck­ing coun­try make the black man hate him­self,” says Iraqi cap­tain Said (Said Tagh­maoui) to his Amer­i­can cap­tive Troy (Mark Wahlberg), ​“just like you hate the Arabs and the chil­dren you bomb over here!”

Regard­less, that quote from the horse’s mouth – ​“I’m proud to be a black Amer­i­can” – and the fact that Jack­son was born to African-Amer­i­can par­ents, plus a pio­neer of black musi­cal forms, sure­ly speaks loud­er than any con­jec­ture. How­ev­er he appeared cos­met­i­cal­ly, Michael Jack­son was, unequiv­o­cal­ly, a black man.

One won­ders, then, what Jack­son would have made of the jaw-drop­ping­ly bizarre news that the white, British actor Joseph Fiennes – famed for play­ing a young Bill Shake­speare in 1998’s Shake­speare in Love – would por­tray him in a one-off, half-hour com­e­dy-dra­ma enti­tled Eliz­a­beth, Michael and Mar­lon. Com­mis­sioned by British com­pa­ny Sky Atlantic, the show, which will air lat­er this year, is based upon a wacky and prob­a­bly apoc­ryphal sto­ry: in the after­math of the ⁹⁄₁₁ ter­ror­ist attacks, Jack­son, along with Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor and Mar­lon Bran­do (to be played by Stockard Chan­ning and Bri­an Cox, respec­tive­ly) alleged­ly embarked upon a cross-coun­try dash, tak­ing turns dri­ving, while Bran­do gorged on burg­ers and fries.

“It is part of a series of come­dies about unlike­ly sto­ries from arts and cul­tur­al his­to­ry,” a Sky Arts state­ment read, adding that pro­duc­ers are afford­ed ​“the cre­ative free­dom to cast roles as they wish.” (It’s notable that nei­ther Bran­do nor Tay­lor will be played by non-white actors, mean­ing that it is not a con­cep­tu­al, any­thing-goes iden­ti­ty exer­cise in the vein of Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, in which six actors of var­ied gen­der, age and race played Bob Dylan.)

Fiennes, for his part, appears casu­al­ly bemused by the cast­ing, if not suf­fi­cient­ly con­cerned to have turned down the role. ​“I’m a white, mid­dle-class guy from Lon­don,” he told ET Online, har­bour­ing no Doleza­lian delu­sions, ​“I’m as shocked as you might be.” Fiennes also com­ment­ed that ​“he [Jack­son] was prob­a­bly clos­er to my colour than his orig­i­nal colour” – a dis­may­ing­ly skin-deep response, sug­gest­ing that he hadn’t researched too deeply into the pas­sion of Jackson’s self-identification.

The cast­ing of Fiennes has prompt­ed a strong response on social media – a mix­ture of hor­ror, increduli­ty and wry amuse­ment – and, giv­en the cur­rent cli­mate, it’s not hard to see why. Of course ​“act­ing”, by def­i­n­i­tion, involves play­ing oth­er peo­ple, but the pro­fes­sion doesn’t exist in a social, his­tor­i­cal and polit­i­cal vac­u­um: when it comes to race and oppor­tu­ni­ty, the play­ing field is far from lev­el (it’s why the time-hon­oured ​“but what about White Chicks?” reverse-black­face argu­ment doesn’t wash; there’s no white ver­sion of the mon­tage which clos­es Spike Lee’s Bam­boo­zled.)

The news emerges at a time of #OscarsSoWhite, and ani­mat­ed, con­struc­tive con­ver­sa­tions about the need for greater indus­try diver­si­ty. A time of con­tro­ver­sy over white actors (still) brown­ing-up for roles in block­busters like Exo­dus: Gods and Kings and Gods of Egypt. A time in which the mere sug­ges­tion of a black actor (Idris Elba) play­ing an entire­ly fic­tion­al char­ac­ter (James Bond) is met with both robust and craven­ly cod­ed objec­tions (Elba was ​“too street” for the role, accord­ing to 007 author Antho­ny Horowitz.)

Indeed, the selec­tion of Fiennes – a Lon­don­er – feels like a slap in the face for black British actors. The exo­dus of black tal­ent to Amer­i­ca, prompt­ed by a lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty and struc­tur­al sup­port at home, has been a run­ning point of debate, cit­ed recent­ly by David Oyelowo in an impas­sioned Guardian inter­view (“I felt pushed out of the UK because of the glass ceil­ing I could feel my head bob­bing against.”) In a cli­mate where a white man can be cast as the great­est black enter­tain­er of his gen­er­a­tion, can you blame the likes of David Hare­wood, Daniel Kalu­uya, Mar­i­anne Jean-Bap­tiste and Ricky Whit­tle for try­ing to make a go of it else­where? It makes one won­der what’s next on the hori­zon. Hugh Grant as Luther Van­dross? Carey Mul­li­gan as Aretha Franklin? (I’m not clued in on the mat­ter, but I’d very be inter­est­ed to learn whether Fiennes walked into the role, beat off com­pe­ti­tion from black actors, or whether open audi­tions were held at all. For the record, my unso­licit­ed Jacko cast­ing sug­ges­tions: Dan­ny-Lee Wyn­ter, Col­in Salmon, or Ash­ley Walters.)

All that being said, one need only glance at VH‑1’s stratos­pher­i­cal­ly ter­ri­ble Man in the Mir­ror: The Michael Jack­son Sto­ry from 2004 to see that cast­ing a black actor as Michael Jack­son is not an auto­mat­ic short­cut to suc­cess and authen­tic­i­ty in itself. In this lurid and trashy TV movie, the hulk­ing 6’3’’ actor Flex Alexan­der makes a com­plete hash of approx­i­mat­ing Jackson’s feline voice and slim, 5’9’’ frame, while his cos­met­ic tran­si­tion from dark to light skin is han­dled espe­cial­ly poor­ly by the film­mak­ers – one YouTube com­menter sums it up best when he writes, ​“lol im dead they dip this dude in baby pow­der and said action.”

How­ev­er, this out­ly­ing fail­ure doesn’t mit­i­gate the wrong-head­ed­ness of Fiennes’ cast­ing. It is, I think, at least in part relat­ed to an his­tor­i­cal­ly casu­al atti­tude toward mat­ters of race in the UK media land­scape, engen­dered by a dis­tinct lack of diver­si­ty at deci­sion-mak­ing lev­el. Con­sid­er that the BBC’s long-run­ning ​‘Black and White Min­strel Show’ wasn’t can­celled until, aston­ish­ing­ly, 1978, when black actors like Don War­ring­ton, Rudolph Walk­er and Nor­man Beat­on were appear­ing reg­u­lar­ly on TV, doing their best with often lim­it­ed roles. In the ensu­ing years, neo-black- and brown-face has con­tin­ued to appear on British screens with an alarm­ing frequency.

A 2008 sketch in which a black­faced Rory Brem­n­er shucks and jives as a bug-eyed ver­sion of celebri­ty chef Ains­ley Har­riott, before feed­ing him­self into a meat-grinder, is among the most dis­turb­ing things I’ve ever seen on TV, but an OFCOM response to view­er com­plaints flat­ly denied the pres­ence of racism. Oth­er actors like Matt Lucas and David Wal­liams have got­ten away with indulging in a panoply of trou­bling racial stereo­types in their work (Pre­cious Lit­tle, any­one? Ting Tong?), while Har­ry Enfield and Paul White­house have done the same. In the cur­rent BBC show, the gen­er­al­ly mirth­ful music mock­u­men­tary Bri­an Pern, the white British actress Lucy Mont­gomery plays Pepi­ta, a ​“fiery” Mex­i­can car­i­ca­ture in brown­face. (I feel com­pelled to issue a dis­claimer here: I’m not say­ing that all of these come­di­ans are vir­u­lent racists, or that I’ve react­ed with a stony face to every­thing they’ve ever done – I still have mad love for George Dawes! I’m just point­ing out that these issues are all connected.)

Then, of course, there was Leigh Fran­cis’ berserk, plas­tic-mas­quer­ade show, Bo Selec­ta, which built upon the pop­u­lar British con­cep­tion of ​“Wacko Jacko” (his 1996 run-in with Jarvis Cock­er at the BRITs; his fraught inter­view with Mar­tin Bashir) to cre­ate an absur­dist, jive-talk­ing ver­sion of the star (“Sha’mone mutha­fuc­ka!”) Many years ago, long before I’d start­ed writ­ing and think­ing seri­ous­ly about issues of race and rep­re­sen­ta­tion, I found the show’s unhinged qual­i­ty vague­ly amusing.

Watch­ing it back today, I find myself hor­ri­fied by its fla­grant car­i­ca­tures of black pub­lic fig­ures, includ­ing Jack­son, Quin­cy Jones, Oprah Win­frey and Trisha God­dard, while also appre­ci­at­ing that its lam­poon­ery runs far beyond one racial cat­e­go­ry. When the Guardian’s Sam Delaney sug­gest­ed to Fran­cis in 2006 that the show uses the same racialised clich­es in its por­tray­al of black peo­ple that open­ly racist peo­ple do, he received a defen­sive­ly hos­tile response: ​“I think peo­ple go around tread­ing on eggshells and wor­ry­ing, ​‘Ooh, is he racist?’ No! You’re fuck­ing racist because you’re wor­ry­ing about it. I’m not wor­ry­ing about it because I know I’m not racist!”

Fran­cis cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly knew he wasn’t racist, and the cre­ative team behind Eliz­a­beth, Michael and Mar­lon pre­sum­ably don’t think that they’re doing any­thing remote­ly trou­ble­some, either. Nobody yet knows how the show will pan out – it just might be a mod­el of act­ing, script­ing, cin­e­matog­ra­phy and edit­ing – but the appar­ent clue­less­ness of its cen­tral cast­ing has giv­en it a moun­tain to climb, and the rest of us plen­ty to discuss.

What are your thoughts on Fiennes’ cast­ing? Have your say @LWLies